Business Is Picking Up ‘Little Old Ladies’ Supplement Social Security By Cleaning Up After Dogs

It’s a dirty job, but Gerry Wood’s disposition is as sunny as the late summer weather.

Armed with a small rake, industrial-sized dustpan and lots and lots of dog biscuits, the great grandmother enters the lair of Lucky the Labrador retriever.

“Most of them know what day you’re coming and at what time,” says Wood, 69, and a partner in Granny Scoops Poop Patrol, a Spokane dog litter cleanup service. “They wait for you at the gate. That’s the best part of this job - the dogs.”

Wood, wearing a pith helmet, pink T-shirt, white shorts and sneakers, jerks open the gate leading to the back yard of a well-kept home in the Spokane Valley.

Lucky, 8 months old and black as tar, pads up to her expectantly.

“Sit,” she says.

He does.

She gives him a couple of biscuits and a pat on the head. “Good boy.”

Pleasantries out of the way, Granny Gerry goes to work.

“We check the yard with a grid pattern,” says Wood, turning serious as she paces the well-manicured lawn. “Sometimes you can’t see it from one direction, but you can see it from the other.”

She sweeps through the back yard raking about two dozen piles into her dustpan. She then double sacks the litter in plastic bags, ties off the package with a square knot and is finished, all in about 10 minutes.

“There you go,” she says, holding up the finished product, which will go to the curb to be picked up with the rest of the home’s garbage.

Then it’s off to the next stop, to clean up after Duke, a 150-pound mastiff, and his buddy Jake, a English bulldog puppy.

“We call them the long and the short of it,” Wood laughs.

Such is life for Wood and her partner, Jan Loehr.

The two clean up after 74 dogs in 43 yards throughout the Spokane area. The once-a-week service costs $26 per month.

Wood and Loehr’s clientele includes senior citizens on Social Security and South Hill physicians.

Loehr started the business five years ago, after undergoing triplebypass heart surgery.

Her doctor ordered her to get more exercise, and Loehr, a 62-year-old great-grandmother, was looking for a way to make some money as well.

“I thought to myself, ‘What can I do that no one else is doing?”’ Loehr says. “This was what I came up with. It’s a good supplement to Social Security.”

Wood joined the business after getting out of mowing lawns. She sold her last mower recently.

The self-anointed “little old ladies,” who share a home on Spokane’s northeast side, take their work seriously.

They’re out there “five days a week, 52 weeks a year,” Wood says.

Wood does the company books on computer. “We can send our records to the accountant on disk. It’s great,” she says.

Loehr makes up their business cards on computer as well.

They have an answering machine to take calls while they’re on patrol - the message, “Remember, we pick up where your dog leaves off…” - and a pager in case of a canine gastrointestinal emergency.

They have a listing in the Yellow Pages and advertise in some weekly newspapers.

The two women hope to expand the business next year and maybe take on some extra help.

Loehr says the work is perfect for single mothers who may have only mornings to work. It could be a way to get some people off welfare, she adds.

The potential for growth is there.

According to records at the county animal shelter, there are more than 22,000 dogs licensed in Spokane County this year.

Shelter director Marianne Sinclair says that figure represents fewer than half the actual number of dogs in the county.

“It’s definitely a growth industry,” Loehr says. “More and more people are getting dogs because of the fear factor. They want that protection, or the companionship.”

And where there are canines, there will be canine droppings, Wood adds.

Dogs will do what dogs will do, come rain, shine, clouds, whatever, she says. “They don’t quit.”

Neither do the two grannies.

“I plan to do this until I can’t do it anymore,” Wood says as Loehr stands nearby, nodding her head and feeding a biscuit to Jake the bulldog.

“You can’t just sit around,” Loehr says.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)