For dogs in need, a patch will do
Nature called, and an entrepreneur answered. She will deliver fresh grass to dogs whose options are limited.
By LAUREN BAYNE ANDERSON
Published June 5, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Nadine Wadsworth had her dogs, Autumn and Winter, for only days when she realized things couldn't go on as they had been.
"I was walking them down two flights of stairs in my nightgown in the middle of the night" so they could do their business, said Wadsworth, who lives on Treasure Island. "I thought, what can I do so that I don't have to go out there?"
Within a week, Wadsworth built a wooden box, filled it with sod and placed it on her condominium balcony. Soon her dogs were using it to do their business, and she was getting a full night's sleep.
But it wasn't until neighbors asked her to make them boxes for their dogs that she realized her idea was bigger than her own two pups.
Those two neighbors became the first customers of Doggy Sod, her new business. For $40 a month, Wadsworth will provide a 2- by 3-foot box and replace the sod every other week for customers in St. Petersburg, part of Clearwater and the beaches. For those outside the St. Petersburg area, she charges $65 for the setup but does not provide services.
Wadsworth said the sod usually lasts two weeks. Sometimes, if it's in a sunny area, it may need watering.
She said using the sod is more sanitary than laying down paper, and she envisions the boxes as a hit with apartment dwellers and elderly people who have trouble getting up and down stairs.
"A lot of seniors and working couples like the idea," she said. "I'm also finding dogs who have trouble climbing stairs and whose owners have to carry them."
When she launched Doggy Sod in January, Wadsworth said she had never seen anything else like it. But after Internet searches, she came across a few others, outside the Tampa Bay area.
Pooch Potty of Los Angeles provides a similar product, but charges up to $275 for a setup and up to $65 a week for maintenance. The company recently expanded to New York City and will ship its boxes and sod to customers on the West Coast and Northeast.
Doggy Duty in Portland, Ore., and PETaPOTTY in Portland, Maine, also offer versions of the box.
Wadsworth said that those companies are an inspiration that hers can work, too.
Although the sod tray is changed only twice a month, Wadsworth said that's enough. In between servicing, she tells customers to "pick up the poop and flush it down toilet." The sod is dumped for recycling.
"There's no odor, because it's outside," she said.
Mary Stevens said she bought Wadsworth's service for her 5-year-old Maltese-poodle mix.
At first, she and her husband, Steve, made their own box. They installed a dog door in their sliding glass door so their Maltipoo could go when they weren't home.
But after five years of schlepping messy sod from a farm through their house, Stevens said she jumped at the chance to have someone else do it for her.
"It had gotten to be quite a chore," Stevens said. "I saw an ad in the paper (for Doggy Sod) and thought we don't have to do it ourselves."
She said she loves having the box because if she leaves for a day she is confident there won't be any accidents in the house.
Wadsworth said she hasn't given up her day job as a bookkeeper with a property management company. But she hopes to turn a profit by year's end.
One customer takes the sod box along while traveling in an RV; another takes the dog - and the sod box - aboard a boat.
"I created a little box of sod, and dogs took to it real well," she said. "Now they're hooked on it."
Doggy Sod isn't yet listed in the phone book or on the Internet. If interested, customers should call (727) 420-5056.