How to Make a Clean Dog Friendly Backyard

Every day thousands of families adopt dogs into their households for personal safety, companionship, and love. Some dogs may be considered house or apartment pets, but an overwhelming amount of dogs are outdoor pets, allowed to roam freely in their owner's backyard, playing with toys that are inadvertently thrown over the fence by the neighbor's children and rolling around in their own feces.

While completing an inventory of items people find in their backyard most may come across baseballs, volleyballs, frisbees, mushrooms, fire ants nests and loads of dog feces. Items such as these are not healthy for your family dog and even worse for your kids. Unhealthy outdoor environments causes stomach ailments and other health complications in dogs, easily contributing to an increase of avoidable veterinarian visits.

Dog waste contains many parasites and diseases. When it rains, left over waste particles runs into streams and rivers as runoff. In addition to worms and protozoa, pet waste also contains fecal coliform bacteria. This group of bacteria includes the specific bacteria E. Coli (Escherichia coli)that can cause serious illness and even death to people who ingest contaminated water. There is a direct correlation between bacteria concentrations and gastrointestinal illness. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) government's findings, a single gram of dog feces can contain 23 million fecal coliform bacteria, which are known to cause cramps, diarrhea, intestinal illness, and serious kidney disorders in humans if left untreated.

Here are steps that you can follow to keep a clean dog-friendly backyard:

1. Pick up all debris such as pieces of wood that your dog may choke on, putting them in a bag or around plants that your dog can't get to.

2. Pick up all toys and putting them in a plastic bag away from your pets reach for when the neighbor returns to claim the toys.

3. Pick up as much dog feces as possible, some feces might not be completely solid so it can sometime be futile but get as much as possible. If you don't like picking up feces like the rest of us, use a rake, a shovel and a heavy-duty plastic bag.

4. Find organic or natural alternatives to control fire ants.

5. Find organic or natural alternatives to control feces related diseases.

There are new organic alternatives to control fungus and E. coli related to dog feces. These alternatives are a part of the nations ever growing going green movement. Just do a little research.