<--Signs and flags at Juanita Beach Park, it's a mine field out there!

270 to be exact, for this month so far, and that's a lot of poop!  I'm going to try really hard to not insert a bunch of 'crappy' jokes throughout this post but I may not be able to help myself. 

There are 20,000 dogs in Kirkland.  That equals approx 6,000 pounds of poop a day, which is almost considered a $#!*t ton. And for the record, dog poop is not fertilizer, it can actually contaminate our waters and spread disease between dogs (E.coli, roundworms, parvovirus).  And then how sad must you  be if you're the parent of the toddler that crawls through a giant pile.  Or the adult that walks through it and then gets it on your car floormat for a long-lasting unintended air freshener. Plus it just looks bad all over our public places.

You may have noticed little yellow flags at Juanita Beach Park (on both the shore side and the north side) and Hazen Hills Park recently- indicating where un-scooped dog droppings have been left.  The City of Kirkland was awarded a grant by the King Conservation District that funds an educational campaign that includes research and monitoring to help protect our water quality.  And some lucky soul at the city gets to mark your pet's mess every Monday and take water samples to the lab for testing.  Labs will be back and analysis will happen toward the end of the year. By the way, this season marks the lowest number of spawning sockeye ever, which can be directly impacted by water quality issues in Lake Washington.

<--Hween is in 2 weeks people

So--- SCOOPY YOUR PET'S POOPY-- that's the message. There are plenty of new pet waste stations in our parks and the city is stocked with craploads of bags.  Already know this? Or are you that guy on your phone pretending not to notice when Rufus is dropping a deuce? Let's keep Kirkland clean.

If you think you're a super-scooper, then accept the challenge--  Take the pledge and receive a free poop scoop toolkit (dreams DO come true!).

Happy scooping!