Bringing a new puppy into your home is exciting, but it changes the chore load in the backyard. A puppy’s digestive system runs on its own schedule, and they go to the bathroom much more frequently than an adult dog. If you were getting by with cleaning the yard every other week for your older dog, that schedule is going to fail with a new puppy in the house.
The volume of waste
Puppies eat several small meals a day, which means they are processing food constantly. While the individual piles are small, the sheer frequency means the total volume of waste in the yard multiplies rapidly.
If you have an older dog and you add a puppy, the waste does not just double, the distribution changes. Puppies have not learned to go in a designated corner of the yard yet. They will leave waste on the patio, on the artificial turf, and directly in the middle of the grass lawn. To find it all, our technicians have to walk a strict, methodical grid across the entire property.
The health risks for puppies
The most important reason to maintain a strict cleanup schedule with a new puppy is health and safety. Puppies have immature immune systems and are highly susceptible to the bacteria and parasites found in dog waste.
Dog waste carries bacteria like E. coli and salmonella, as well as parasites like roundworm, hookworm and giardia. The intense Las Vegas heat does not kill these parasites, it just bakes the waste, allowing the eggs and cysts to settle into the soil or the backing of your artificial turf. Because puppies explore the world with their mouths, sniffing, licking, and chewing everything in the yard, leaving old waste on the ground is dangerous.
The only way to stop the cycle of infection is to remove the waste completely before the parasites can leach into the environment.
Adjusting your route schedule
If you manage the chore yourself, you need to pick up the yard daily while the puppy is young. If you use a professional service, you must evaluate your current frequency.
If you are on a weekly plan with one adult dog, adding a puppy might push you into needing twice weekly service, especially during the extreme Las Vegas summer when heat bakes the waste and creates strong odors on rock and turf. Because our service is month to month with no long-term contracts, you can easily increase your frequency while the puppy is young and drop back to a weekly schedule once they mature and their bathroom habits stabilize.
When you update your account, remember that our quotes are based on dog count. Each additional dog adds three dollars to your base per-visit rate. Let our customer care coordinator know you added a puppy, and we will adjust your billing on the first of the month without an issue.
Sanitation standards
When you hire a service to clean a yard used by a vulnerable puppy, sanitation is vital. We never use shared buckets that carry waste from house to house. The waste from your yard is bagged securely and placed directly in your outdoor bin. Furthermore, our technicians spray their boots and tools with a kennel-grade disinfectant before opening every gate, checking we never track another property’s problems onto your lawn.