Dog Poop Scooping in Las Cruces, New Mexico

Las Cruces is New Mexico's second-largest city and a place where a lot of people have dogs: university students and staff, military and government workers, retirees and young families. It has its own neighborhoods, its own pace and its own mix of older and newer homes. The city lists two public dog parks: Rinconada Dog Park on Bataan Memorial West, open from dawn to dusk, and the Las Cruces Dog Park at Burn Lake. Under city code, those off-leash areas are the only public places a dog may go without restraint.

Las Cruces sits in the Mesilla Valley along the Rio Grande, about 45 miles north of El Paso on Interstate 10. The Organ Mountains rise to the east, and New Mexico State University is in the city. The climate is high desert: hot summers, a late-summer monsoon, cool winter nights and windy springs. Two separate systems carry water away. Sewage goes to a treatment plant, but storm runoff travels through drainage pipes, washes and channels toward the Rio Grande, and the city points out that it is not cleaned or filtered along the way, which is why it asks residents to keep pollutants out of it.

Lost and stray animals in the city end up at the Animal Services Center of the Mesilla Valley, which city code names as the main shelter for stray, lost, abandoned and surrendered animals in Las Cruces. A microchip is how a lost dog gets traced back to its owner, which is why the code requires one for every dog and cat 3 months and older. After a move or a new phone number, owners have 30 days to update the details on file with the microchip company.

Las Cruces yards range from older homes with grass and shade trees near the valley to newer homes with rock landscaping and turf on the east side and the mesa. Grass hides waste until it is mowed over. Rock and turf hold heat and odor. Many homes have both. Tell us what your yard looks like when you request a quote, and whether your dogs share it with a garden or play area you want kept clear. A yard picked up before the monsoon has less to send into that runoff.

Grass yards also come with their own fly. University of California pest guidance describes the stable fly, sometimes called the dog fly because it bites around the edges of dogs' ears, and notes that it breeds in moist grass clippings and compost, especially when they are mixed with animal waste and urine. Picking up the lawn before it is mowed, and bagging wet clippings or composting them in a pile that gets turned, takes away places it can start.

Those clippings have a city pickup of their own. Residents can put grass clippings, weeds and leaves in clear plastic bags at the curb for the city's Green Grappler collection on their pickup day, setting them out no earlier than the night before and no later than 6 a.m. Bagging clippings on mowing day and putting them out on schedule leaves the stable fly less to work with than a pile along the side wall.

The city's nuisance rules reach into the backyard. Section 7-18 of the code asks owners to dispose of pet waste in a watertight container that flies cannot get into, emptied often enough that it never becomes a nuisance or a health hazard. Off your property, the same section requires picking up immediately when a dog goes on public ground or a neighbor's lot. Together with the bagging rule, that points to a tied bag inside a closed garbage cart.