The city has a pooper scooper law. But what about when you're on private property? For some apartment complexes, it means they're asking their residents to submit their pets to a DNA test.
Franklin the dog has his DNA in a databank, stored by a company called PooPrints. Its sole purpose is helping apartment complexes like the Fairmont in Montrose deal with a doggie waste problem on its property.
Bano Benavides with PooPrints Gulf Coast explained, "The idea is a when a sample is found, dog waste can be collected by management and sent to our labs."
Benavides owns Franklin and the PooPrints distributorship in Houston. He says the idea is that apartment complexes would register their residents' dogs in the DNA databank. So when dog waste is found on the property, it can be traced to the offender.
Dog owners we talked to didn't love the idea.
"I think that's really inappropriate," said dog owner Madison McBurney. "I mean, what if it's diarrhea, you can't really pick that up."
"My question is it's over-reaching," said dog owner. "If this is serious and this is real, I just wonder if they're going to put the owner in jail, or the dog in jail."
But the idea, says Benavides, is to make apartment complexes a better environment for all renters, whether they have dogs or not.
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