Dog Waste Removal in Tacoma

Start with the trash calendar, because in Tacoma it changes the math. Garbage and recycling are collected every other week, alternating with the food and yard waste cart, and the city is blunt about which one dog waste belongs in. Not the yard cart. Bag it and put it in the garbage, because pet waste carries bacteria that composting will not kill. Do that arithmetic and a week of bagged dog waste can sit in a closed bin for fourteen days before a truck comes for it. Most people never think about that until the second warm stretch of July, which is right about when they go looking for a pooper scooper service in Tacoma. Have us haul it out instead and it leaves the property with the crew.

Getting to the yard is its own Tacoma question. The city's setout rules assume alley pickup as readily as curbside: put the container in the street or alley, then pull it back off the curb or alley once it has been emptied. In the North Slope Historic District, 228 acres on the slope above Commencement Bay, that is the entire layout. Driveways off the main streets are infrequent there and almost every detached garage sits on an alley, so the gate we need is behind the house rather than beside it. Those blocks were platted on 25-foot lots, which keeps the grass narrow, and a dog that uses all of it does not leave much unnoticed. Tell us which gate to come through and that is the one we use.

The North End slope complicates the rest. Four gulches, Garfield, Buckley, Puget and Mason, cut down through it toward Ruston Way, and on a lot backing one of those, gravity walks everything to the bottom fence line. Those corners get worked first rather than last.

Tacoma requires a dog to be on a leash no longer than eight feet or confined to the owner's property, so the week's volume lands at home rather than out on the walk. Set us on a weekly route, a bi-weekly one, or a single reset after a wet spring. It goes out with us either way, instead of into a bin to wait two weeks.