The Gates of Allen Station, shame, shame on you.
Yes, folks, another Texas Homeowners Association is taking the idiotic and pathetic step of DNA testing all dogs in the neighborhood. Swab your doggie’s cheeks, submit the DNA sample to your HOA. That swab goes to the lab and your pooch is branded for life. Now, if your dog brands the lawn of the HOA president or a board member, the feces fits the crime, the owner gets the fine. The thought of HOA officials dropping to their hands and knees and probing poops with thermometers and scoops just defies the imagination. The HOA claims it’s a way of stopping canine terrorists from messing up the neighborhood.
Well, frankly folks, it’s just another way of wrecking a nice neighborhood by turning neighbor against neighbor. First of all, who’s motivated to institute such a practice? It costs a couple hundred bucks per pooch per swab. And the owner of each defiling dog is fined hundreds of dollars. That money is going into someone’s pocket. It’s a real revenue generator.
But second, it won’t work. Once homeowners start getting angry at being fined, they’re going to start collecting poop from all over and tossing it onto the board president’s lawn. He’s going to get innundated. Of course, he’ll submit hundreds of different DNA samples from the hundreds of brown spots in the front yard. And of course, he’ll charge thousands and thousands of dollars in lab costs to the HOA’s ‘secret’ reimbursement budget. The homeowners will be assessed, of course. Everybody will hate everybody, the president’s house will really get bombed now.
When people get stupid, stupid things happen.
(click here for Dallas dog story)
I anticipate the funniest pet DNA stories will come when some HOA resident knows somebody who works at the zoo!
I’m the first to say all pet owners should be picking up the poop from their pets. When I first moved into Quivira Falls I thought with all the sidewalks it would be nice to go out and take walks. One walk was enough for me. I had to walk with my head down watching the poop piles all over the sidewalk. The grass along the edge of the sidewalk was lined with poop. I never walked on the sidewalks again and nearly every time I walk across the grass for something I end up with dog poop on my shoes. It’s nasty. Very nasty but I don’t think DNA testing is going to do anything but cause more ugliness in the neighborhood. All at the expense of the homeowners.