How do I dissolve doggie do-do?

April 30, 2005 9:26 AM

The last bit of snow is finally melting in my backyard (yes, I live in Canada) to reveal a pile of dog shit, courtesy of my young black lab. Any ideas on how to melt that too? Any substances (preferably non-toxic) that I could spread on the lawn to speed up the process?
posted by thejimp to Pets & Animals (13 answers total)

shovel it and bury it. it doesn't melt
posted by seawallrunner at 9:29 AM on April 30, 2005

We looked into a doggie cleanup service around here...$50 CAN for 2 dogs worth of crap. Maybe something like that would do the trick?
posted by jikel_morten at 9:33 AM on April 30, 2005

It's the pottery bow wow barn rule: You own the dog, you pick up the dogshit.  Promptly.
posted by y2karl at 10:01 AM on April 30, 2005

Heck, why melt it? When I lived in a northern clime, each spring day brought a bit more doggy doo to the surface. I like that stuff frozen, thankyouverymuch, and greatly preferred picking up and bagging it in its frozen and less smelly state. For what it's worth, I used the two-grocery bag method: one bag to put the crap in, the other to use as a 'glove', then turn the glove bag inside out, double bag, tie tight and place in garbage can. All done while the stuff's still frozen.
posted by Savannah at 10:08 AM on April 30, 2005

Have you tried hosing it into the lawn? Set the nozzle on blast. Not sure if this is practical or not. I am sure some dog owners will let us know.
posted by wsg at 10:14 AM on April 30, 2005

welcome to dog ownership...get used to picking it up. i put mine in my compost pile. for picking it up when on walks and whatnot i keep a collection of those little brown plastic doggie doo bags handy. you can buy them or I grab a few every time we go to the dog park...the city keeps them stocked in a dispenser at various parks around here.
posted by jacobsee at 10:24 AM on April 30, 2005

Why would you want to melt it? Just get a shovel under it until it unsticks from the ground. Picking up frozen dogshit is infinitely preferable to the multi-sensorial joy of trying to pick up watery, soupy, half-melted dogshit. In fact I wish there was a pocket hand-held liquid nitrogen spray doohicky you could carry around with you to freeze dogshit on purpose before you picked it up.
posted by biscotti at 10:42 AM on April 30, 2005

What you need is Vapoorize. Go here and watch the infomercial.
posted by wsg at 11:09 AM on April 30, 2005

Just knock it into the bushes with a shovel. The bushes will make it go away.
posted by Ken McE at 11:41 AM on April 30, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for the ideas, but I guess Vapoorize is the closest to a solution that I'm going to get.

I do scoop when my dog poops in the park or on the street, but during the cold long winter, it's difficult to go outside and find all those little lumps in the snow drift every time my dog needs to go out. I take my dog for a long run every day and she usually has at least one dump away from home, but she still does a lot in the back yard.

A few follow-ups:

wsg, I have been doing that and unfortunately, I think it may be the only approach.

jacobsee, be careful composting dog shit. It's high in heavy metals and you wouldn't want to use it for anything remotely edible--though, if you compost, you probably know more about that than I do.

odinsdream, I have a lawn in my back yard, so digging is not ideal. Plus, with a black lab I'd have more dirt than lawn.

Ken McE, will the bushes make my in-laws go away too?
posted by thejimp at 1:33 PM on April 30, 2005

you wouldn't want to use it for anything remotely edible

However, the nitrogen levels in the dog poo have an extremely satisfying effect on fertilizing your lawn. Every spring, the area in which my dog is allowed to poo grows so much faster than areas in which I've even spread store-bought fertilizer.

Next year, if I've got it in me, I'm collecting the poo all winter in a pile, drying it and spreading it out over the lawn come spring.
posted by thanotopsis at 2:29 PM on April 30, 2005

thantopsis: you might actually find that the effect the dogs are having on the yard is more related to their pee than their poo. Dog pee is pretty high in fertilizer content (too high sometimes, that's why some dogs "burn" the lawn"). In my yard there are little clumps of grass that grow faster than the rest, little tufts, and these are generally from where my female dog pees (my male dog pees against the fence or a tree usually unless it's urgent)
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:55 PM on April 30, 2005

why do you say dog poo is high in heavy metals? i'm intersted in learning more. (here I'd finally convinced myself to ignore all the naysayers who say that dog poo has too much dangerous bacteria to be safely compostable.)

from the weeds thread, here's an interesting lawn-care article that mentions doggie do. His first recommendation: leave it.
posted by jacobsee at 10:03 AM on May 2, 2005