BY TAMMY McKILLIP
Correspondent
The side of a When Doody Calls truck has a goofy slogan on it, but the business’ owner says the importance of keeping a lawn clear of pet feces is no laughing matter. MIDDLETOWN – Mary Ellen Levy says her job is a load of … joy.
The Port Monmouth founder of When Doody Calls, a pet waste management company, says she smiles every time someone asks her to talk about the business she started roughly eight years ago when she realized that poop-scooping could be profitable.
“It all started when we got a second dog,” she said. “My children swore they were going to help pick up after it, and, of course, they did not, so I took their allowance away. That’s when I figured, if I can get money from my kids, I can get money from anybody else.”
About the same time, she said, she saw Tim Stone, founder of the California-based company Scoop Master on the television show “To Tell the Truth.” After doing an Internet search on him to find out more about the business, she decided to start her own in Monmouth County.
PHOTOSBY TAMMY MCKILLIP When Doody Calls employee Donna Rockafellow arrives at a local residence to clean the yard. “I was the first one to do it here,” she said. “There are seven companies that do it now, but I was the first.”
Levy said her family was initially embarrassed by her new occupation but that when she had T-shirts printed up with her company’s name and logo, they became a popular fashion statement with her children’s friends.
“My family thought I was out of my mind,” she said. “I made up a T-shirt that had a picture of a little dog, a pile of poop, a fire hydrant and flies on it, with the words ‘When Doody Calls.’ I wanted to make sure that people got the message and knew what the business was about. Pretty soon, all my kids’ friends were wearing them.”
Levy has charged $10 per weekly visit since she began her company, which now has three employees and three trucks marked with its logo. She said that all of her workers wear uniforms and are properly insured.
“We follow all of the rules, regulations and codes of conduct,” she said, adding that her company is also environmentally friendly and disposes of the waste according to each town’s ordinance.
A former veterinary technician, Levy said she is lighthearted about her job, but she also takes the occupation very seriously because feces left in soil can spread hookworms, roundworms, coccidia and other diseases that have been known to cause blindness in children and are almost always spread from one dog to another.
“If one dog has hookworms, I could probably guarantee you the other dog’s going to have them,” she said.
In an effort to provide better health insurance options for her employees, Levy joined with other pet waste specialists five years ago and formed an organization called Association of Professional Waste Specialists (APAWS).
“At our first meeting, there were 11 people,” she said. “Within five months, we had 30 members, and now we have over 130.”
She said the members of APAWS meet each year in different places throughout the country at conventions where they compete in contests, such as “turd herding.”
“We used to use potatoes,” she said. “But now we’ve stepped up. We found plastic turds that look fairly good, so we take 25 of them, and I toss them around, and then we’re each timed. The person who picks up the turds first gets a golden shovel trophy and bragging rights for a year.”
Although Levy said she’s never been bitten while cleaning a yard, the threat is real, and she tells her employees not to wear earphones or talk on their cell phone when they are working.
“It doesn’t sound like a dangerous job, but it could be,” she said. “You’ve got to be aware of your surroundings at all times. I went into a yard once, and when I came out, there were two cop cars. They thought I was robbing the house. I looked at the cop and said, you want to see what I’m taking? Here, you want to check it? He laughed and said, ‘No, thank you, ma’am.’ “
Levy said it’s also important to find out what kind of dog lives in the house and whether or not it’s home before going into the backyard.
“I was cleaning a yard once when they let out three Rottweilers on me,” she said. “I’m a big woman, but let me tell you, I can scale a 5-foot fence in no time! When it comes to being bitten or moving, believe me, you move!”
Levy, who works with her daughter, husband and two close family friends, has recently expanded her business into Staten Island, N.Y., as well as the 25 towns she services in central and southern New Jersey.
“I love my business,” she says. “I wouldn’t do anything else in the world!”
For more information on When Doody Calls, call (732) 495-POOP or visit www.whendoodycalls.com.