Whew, who let the dogs out? Pro `poop scoopers' set to share their wares

ST. LOUIS (AP) _ The folks who've made a business of cleaning up what the dogs leave behind are about to drop in on St. Louis for a gathering all about the scoop on poop. <br><br>Sound like a waste

Friday, January 17th 2003, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

ST. LOUIS (AP) _ The folks who've made a business of cleaning up what the dogs leave behind are about to drop in on St. Louis for a gathering all about the scoop on poop.

Sound like a waste of time? Not for Debbie Levy and others across the country who spring into action whenever doody calls.

``Smells like money to me,'' quips Levy, the suburban St. Louis woman behind Yucko's Poop Scoop'n Service, the home-based outfit she stepped into about a dozen years.

``I look at it as diamonds in the rough,'' says Levy, a veteran poop scooper in what has emerged as a cottage industry complete with its own, Levy-founded trade group and, now, a convention.

More than 30 specialists in dog waste disposal are to converge here Friday through Sunday for the first-ever ``Powwow of Pooper Scoopers.''

There'll be guest speakers, group talks and networking. There'll be a field trip to the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog and a stop at the Gateway Arch. All of it leads to the main event: a contest in which convention-goers use their tools of the trade _ everything from special rakes and hoes to tried-and-true gloved hands _ to rustle up ersatz excrement.

The two swiftest scoopers get trophies. The last-place prize: a memento bearing the likeness of a horse's back end _ something Michael ``Sir Scoop'' Zlotnick hopes he doesn't have to lug home to suburban Philadelphia.

``They call me an odd breed because I don't use a scoop or pan, just disposable latex gloves,'' says Zlotnick, who launched his Poopie Scoopers R Us a year ago as a specialist in ``feces of all species.''

``Don't get me wrong _ every way of scooping is effective,'' adds Zlotnick, who also heads the Association of Professional Animal Waste Specialists, a nonprofit trade group with a code of conduct for pooper scoopers. Among the requirements: disinfect your tools after cleanings, don't mistreat animals, and follow local and state requirements to properly do away with the doo-doo.

Most estimates say a few hundred people make dealing with dogs' No. 2 their No. 1 priority. Such ventures dot America's landscape, from New York's Minesweepers to New Jersey's In the Line of Dooty and California's On Doody and We Do Doo.

If you think it's easy money, don't hold your breath, Levy cautions. While her five-employee Yucko's is her sole income source, the single mother of a 6-year-old daughter warns that prospective Scoopy Doo-ers must handle marketing, taxes and licensing, never mind the endless snickers and wisecracks.

``Business has been picking up'' and other puns have rolled off Levy's tongue since she opened shop in 1990, after stepping onto something the neighbor dog left behind.

Demand since has kept her paying the bills through the service that charges $15 for a once-a-week visit, at least $25 for a stop at least once a month.

Her clientele has included John Geimer, who summoned Yucko's after his golden retriever, Jennifer, kept eliminating outside his jewelry shop. As for cleaning it up, Geimer says, ``it's not that I didn't want to do it. It's just that I didn't have time.''