Source: Tracy Press

It's not just the his business -- It's the dog's 'business'

Karen Coleman, For the Tracy Press


For entrepreneurs like Brian Welsh, cleaning up after “Fido” is serious business. Well, most of the time.

Welsh, a 41-year-old former software engineer, runs Doggy Doody Duty, Tracy’s own pet waste cleanup service. He heads to each job with a pair of rubber gloves, a narrow rake and a long-handled dustpan. He picks up and throws away the waste on-site and disinfects and deodorizes the cleaned-up spots.

“Business is great,” said Welsh, who started in June. “It’s a dirty job that nobody likes to do. People are thrilled when they find out there’s somebody who can do it for them.”

Welsh said he keeps his client list confidential but noted that he has customers as far afield as Pleasanton.

George Welker, whose Lowell Avenue home is surrounded by a chain-link fence with a “Beware of Dog” sign attached, said he’d never let a stranger clean up after his husky and German shepherd mix.

“That’s how I monitor my dogs’ health,” he said, referring to their waste. “They’re sensitive dogs.”

But others would just as soon not deal with the mess, so they hire people like Debra Levy, who is president of the Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists — a trade association for the industry. She owns a company called Yucko’s in St. Louis, Mo., and she said the biggest occupational hazard she’s heard of is “being licked to death.”

Welsh joined the association last month, just in time to celebrate its National Scoop the Poop Week from April 24 to April 30.

“I’m just trying to spread the word,” said Welsh, who handed out discount coupons at his son’s school, McKinley Elementary. He’s pledged to donate $5 to the school for every coupon that is redeemed.

Typically, the onetime fee for retaining his services starts at $55. Startup and maintenance rates are based on factors such as size of the yard and number of dogs. Weekly maintenance fees start at $8.

“It’s absolutely affordable,” Welsh said. “At that price, it’s hard to not get someone to do it.”

Welsh is a native of St. Louis and settled in Tracy in 2000 after he was lured to the area by a dot-com job in San Jose.

When the work in Silicon Valley began to dry up, he found himself out of a job and in search of a home business idea with low startup costs. He immediately dismissed technology-based work, he said, because the market had collapsed and the remaining opportunities were ultra-competitive.
After mulling over the opportunities with his wife, he decided to capitalize on their own love for animals and disdain for cleaning up after them.

“I knew it was definitely a job I didn’t like to do in my own back yard,” he said, “so I was sure there were other people out there who didn’t like to do it.”

According to the two-year-old animal waste association, there are more than 300 professional picker-uppers in the business, and nearly 70 are members. The nonprofit association promotes strict sanitation, business and service standards.
Indeed, there is a reason for doing the job well. Bruno Chomel, a professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, said that cleaning up after pets should be done thoroughly and regularly.

Chomel specializes in diseases that can hop between humans and animals, and he said people and animals can pick up the roundworm disease toxocariasis from dog feces and catch toxoplasmosis from cats. Cat and dog droppings can also carry cryptosporidum, a parasite most often associated with dirty water, and salmonella, bacteria associated with livestock, he said.

For the most part, folks in the business take a lighter touch when they talk about their work. Levy, the association president, calls herself a “turd herder.” Several companies say they’re “No. 1 in No. 2.” A service in Houston is called “Rover’s Leftovers.”

As for the Doggy Doody Duty moniker, Welsh said, “You can’t say the name without at least cracking a smile.”