Holy hotcakes

Today was hot. I'm pretty drained, but I want to share these pictures. I had an initial clean today that went through thirteen 13 gallon trash bags! That's a lot of dog poop. Here are the before and after shots.

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Sorry, not much exciting story here. Like I said, I'm drained. See ya!

A weed-pulling mood?

This might sound weird, but occasionally when I'm cleaning doggy doo I get the urge to yank out some weeds. Strange, right? I liken it to popping a nice zit. Have you ever had a zit that squirted the mirror when you popped it? I'd like to pretend I never have, but I have. It's really satisfying to get all that junk out. It's that same satisfaction when I pull out a weed and you can feel the root coming out of the ground. Ha ha, little weed!

Anyway, I was doing an initial clean this week at a yard that had a few weeds. It was one of those double-gloved-use-your-hands rock cleans, so I figured that as long as I was down at that level, I may as well pull a weed or two that gets in my way. Well, 1 or 2 turned into 10 or 15. Not much, just a few minutes worth. What can I say? I was in a weed-pulling mood. Here are a few before and after shots.

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Howie was so happy! Actually Howie was happy before I cleaned, but I like to think that I lightened his mood a little. While you're saying hello to Howie, say hi to Little Doggy Doo Doo's other new doggy clients from this week!

Howie can't leave his person's side

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Gracie & Nero waiting to be told they can eat

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Peaches, Dusty, Cutie and Bud living the good life

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Pecos and Rosco taking a break from being crazy

Isn't that a pretty truck?

We had two initial cleans today, but I didn't get pictures of either of them! Argh!

The first was actually a very small clean, so there really wasn't anything to take a picture of. The second was a nice month and a half of German Shepherd poop in quarter-inch gravel... the stuff great pictures are made of! Fortunately, it started to dump rain right when I started, so I didn't want to get my camera wet. I did manage to get a picture of my scooper after all was said and done (don't mind the shameless Little Doggy Doo Doo plug in the background :)).

Our First Employee

Please welcome the first employee to the Little Doggy Doo Doo team. He's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. He's a great worker and he's very loyal. The only drawback is he can't drive yet. Maybe one day he'll learn how. It's well worth it, because he doesn't even want to get paid! All he asks for are treats and a good ear-scratching.


I figured I'd better hire him before he puts us out of business! Good thing he can't drive yet...

I am, of course, kidding. It is still just me, my wife and our 14-month old son running the show! Thanks to Karen for this great photo!

As long as I'm here, I may as well post a great picture I got today. One of our clients has this on her gate. I had to stop and look twice to make sure I was reading it correctly.

Welcome!

Welcome to our 5 new clients last week! We're very excited to be picking up after your dogs, and we hope you enjoy our service. I had the pleasure of meeting a local landscaper, and he gave me some great marketing tips. We're of course still trying to grow our customer base so we can keep our heads afloat, but our main focus is our customers' satisfaction.

We are now servicing customers in Albuquerque, Bernalillo, Cedar Crest, Corrales, Placitas, Rio Rancho and Tijeras!

We have started a Flickr account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/littledoggydoodoo/, so we will upload pictures of the dogs we clean up after, as well as some of our initial cleans. Of course, we've integrated Flickr onto the home page of our website at http://www.LittleDoggyDooDoo.com.

Last week I only got shots of a couple of our initial cleans. This was one of the most labor-intensive cleans I've done so far. I think I ended up doing 200 squats. Yes, squats. The yard was mostly rocks, and it had been a while since the owner cleaned up after the dogs. I've found that sometimes it's faster to just put a couple of pairs of gloves on and pick up the poop by hand. It's gross, I know. This way I don't miss any that's wedged in rocks, and I don't take any rocks with me. Here are a couple shots of the yard pre-clean:

I love it. The ultimate sign of a frustrated dog owner -- the broken pooper scooper. That's not mine, in case you were wondering.

This clean looks like it might take quite a while. I don't think there were 6 inches of rocks that didn't have poop on them.

This ended up taking almost 3 hours! My legs were sore for about 3 days afterward. But it's all worth it when you can see a shiny, clean yard.

Doesn't that just look so much better?


The next initial clean was a little more manageable. My new friend Misty has the yard to herself, and it looked like it had been a few weeks since her people had cleaned up after her.

It's funny how dogs have their favorite spots. It always has to be underneath a tree or trampoline for some reason.

Well that's all the fun and excitement from last week!