End the Back Dog

A lot of millennials rent because we can't afford to buy a house thanks to student loans - more specifically student loan INTEREST. A lot of millennials also own pets because when you're drowning in debt what better investment than a creature who eats money and poops work?

I am not a dog person.

I'll give you some time to process that.

I get that this is considered weird by many. I don't dislike animals. I'm just not a pet person in general. In my free time I don't want to attend dog fights but I also don't want to hit up the pet store for more pee pads.

I anticipate that someday in the future my kids will want a pet and I will be more than happy to get them a nice rescue mutt for the backyard. Or maybe they will want a fish or a hamster and we can make room for them in the garage. Or maybe I'll never even have kids because no one wants to marry me and all this speculation is for naught.

I'm glad I have zero interest in owning a dog until I marry rich because they're expensive! According to a brief Google search I conducted, dogs tend to cost around $15,000 throughout their lives. Do you know how many McChickens that is? And at some apartment complexes, that figure keeps rising.

A growing trend among residential management systems is requiring DNA testing for every dog, often at the expense of the owner. What is that DNA used for? Are they trying to connect the puppers to long lost relatives? Attempting to break open a cold case with familial DNA? Nope.

Apartment complexes taking a broken windows approach to deserted dog doo will hire any of a number of companies breaking into the doggie DNA industry to chart all animals and then test neglected feces. Upon signing a lease, residents will have to submit a sample. A saliva sample, not a poop sample so please be careful where you put that swab. The resident will pay a fee ($40ish), the sample is tested and their dog is added to the World Pet Registry. And let me tell you Labradors for Libertarians are pissed!

Once your pooch is registered, not only can they never commit a crime with anonymity again, but if they poop and you don't scoop, the property manager can collect a sample, send it in for testing, determine who did the doo, and fine you.

You know what takes about as much time as bending down to get a stool sample from a pile of dog poop? Picking up the pile of dog poop.

But I still wanted to know more. Was this all just an urban legend? Is there a black...or dare I say, brown...market of DNA samples so your beagle never gets busted? There was really only one way to find out. I went undercover! Never Been Kissed style. But without actually going anywhere. I posed as a prospective renter online and contacted some apartment complexes in my area to inquire about their puppy poop policies.

And it was all true. Not at every single location. My apartment complex has no such policy. But take a look at the response I got from another property less than a mile away.

No word on the amount of the fine for not scooping what your dog is pooping but I can't imagine it's under $100. Testing dog poop samples is now a million dollar industry. My apartment complex can't be bothered to get me a post-war oven but the one down the block is enlisting scientists to track down inconsiderate pet owners?

I've had it with this shit. Literally.

Do we live in a society that values punishing people who don’t like cleaning up after their dogs more than punishing men who rape?* Now I will admit, this is not a 1-to-1 transaction as testing rape kits is about 10x as expensive as testing doggie DNA but honestly what is more important  - using your greyhound's genetics to track down a poopetrator or locking up rapists? This is NOT a rhetorical question and there IS a wrong answer.

The thing is it's just not profitable to put rapists in jail. Who does that help? Women, mainly. Survivors of rape are treated as a negligible niche market because there's no money in it. There are many contributing factors to the large number of rape kits that go untested every year. Our system for testing rape kits lacks clear protocols, training programs and lab funding. There's no law. And there's no order.


But squeezing an extra $40 fee here and $100 fine there from people who are likely to be living paycheck to paycheck? Now that's just good business, right?

You can learn more or donate to End the Backlog, a program dedicated to bringing about the policy changes needed to permanently solve this problem, founded by Detective Olivia Benson herself, here.


*For the record I acknowledge that not all rapists are men. And not all rape victims are women. But if you read this blogpost and your first thought was "hey! what about men?" then statically speaking - shut up.