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While walking down the street last night, one of our friends slipped and fell backwards, rather ungraciously we might add, on a fresh pile of dog poop. Luckily she caught her balance, and our arm, before hitting the pavement but it was close. Really, really close.
With that in mind we were immediately attracted to this weeks Freakonomics column in the Times Magazine in which the authors discuss the number of dogs in the city (estimated to be around one million), the number of licensed dogs in the city (only 102,004 - who knew your dog needed a license?), the number of dog-waste related tickets given out by the police last year (471), and how dog shit stands up as a source for DNA sampling (apparently it is very robust). Not to mention the fact that at the end of the 19th century the roughly 200,000 horses in the city produced twenty-five hundred tons of horse manure. Every day.
After spreading all of those wonderful facts the authors throw out the somewhat silly idea that a good way to deal with the poo on the streets these days would be to set up a Dog DNA bank and to have cops test any un-picked-up dog feces so as to later ticket the dogs owner. Gothamist doesn't really care for the idea (just seems a bit silly to us) but we certainly are surprised that there are so few tickets issued to people who don't curb their dogs. You'd think that considering the long list of random things the NYPD loves to give out tickets for that'd they would be all over that shit, so to speak.
Illustration by Istvan Banyai for the NYTimes.
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I've gotten a ticket at 9:02 AM in Prospect Park... dogs need to be on leash after 9. I had the leash in my hand.
What is the dog license fee for, exactly? I'm certainly not going to be renewing mine. (er, my dog's...)
They almost never ticket in Prospect Park, even when they should.
Dog licenses, I think, are kept to ensure owners are vaccinating their pets; licenses aren't issued until the gov't gets proof of vaccination.
I would be in favor of a Poop Patrol that followed dog owners. Should an owner refuse to pick up after their pet, they'd be forced to bend down and lick it up, Divine-style.
It would be great if the city would ticket more people that don't curb their dogs. As one of many responsible dog owner's, I hate the bad rap the poopy owners give the rest of us! Having a dog in a crowded city requires obedience training for the dogs AND the owners apparently!
Regarding licenses, New York State requires that all dogs be licensed. This is partially to confirm all dogs have their rabies vaccine (the only vaccine required by law), partly to help return lost dogs to their owners, and also to help with animal control issues. For more info see http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/vet/vet2.shtml
I live on a dogshit-strewn west village street and would love to see owners paying for not scooping. The fine should be a thousand dollars.
Ticketing folks who don't clean up after their dogs is a GREAT idea. People like that give responsible pet owners a bad name!
New York State (not just the city) requires dog licensing, by the way. It's partly to enforce rabies vaccinations (the only vaccine required by law) but also for animal control purposes and to help get lost pets back to their owners.