Your Puppy At Home: Waste Disposal

Check your local laws concerning disposal of animal waste. In most areas you can bag it and throw it in the trash, but some cities ban dog and cat fences from household garbage or require double bagging or other special disposal.

If you have a house with a yard where you can dig a hole, you could bury the poop. Many shrubs appreciate dog poop as fertilizer when it's buried near their roots. It's considered unwise to put pet waste in a vegetable garden though, as some parasites can affect both animals and people.

An in-ground dog-waste digester is another option if you have a yard where you can dig a hole a couple of feet deep and wide. This is an open-bottomed plastic or metal cylinder buried a couple of feet in the ground, with a lid just above ground level to keep weather out and odours in. You'll need to periodically sprinkle special enzymes (available where digesters are sold) over the droppings to speed decomposition and convert the waste into soil.

When you and your dog visit parks or take walks around the neighbourhood you'll need another poop-scooping accessory: plastic bags. Many cities and towns have laws about cleaning up pet waste in public areas - but even if yours doesn't, it's the right thing to do. Cleaning up after our dogs is a responsibility that must be taken seriously if we hope to keep our public dog-walking privileges intact.

Picking up after your dog using a plastic bag as a scoop is simple. Just put your hand inside the bag like a mitten, grab up the droppings, turn the bag inside out, and tie off the top. It's not very aesthetic, but it gets the job done.

Several companies sell special bags for poop pick-up. Some have a flat cardboard hoe with a plastic bag attached. Others have cardboard jaws. Some are scented with perfume; others are plain. Ordinary plastic food bags work just as well for poop pick-up as specialty scoop-bags.