Christopher Anderson/The Star
Elliot Oren uses a kayak with one of his trained border collies to scare geese out of Allen Pond Park on Monday in Bowie.
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Yes, Bowie Animal Control already knows about the two border collies running unleashed in Allen Pond Park but no, they aren't worried about it.
The dogs are actually members of the Geese Police, a goose removal service the city recently hired to rid the park of geese and their droppings by scaring them away. Saturday was the company's first day on the job in Bowie, using Max and Mike, two trained collies that follow commands to stalk, herd and stare down the geese but never actually attack them.
"We end up with a fair amount of mess [from the geese]," said Deutsch, adding the Bowie Parks Department gets stuck with the dirty cleanup work.
With several hundred geese sometimes frequenting the pond or the nearby athletic fields each day, LaPorta said the reminders they leave behind negate the water quality.
"In Bowie, all the droppings that go in the water raise high nitrogen levels that kill off everything in the water and you start having the fish killed," LaPorta said. "I know geese are leaving the pond and going to the athletic fields. ... People don't want their kids on the soccer fields rolling around in that."
City staff hopes through the regular visits to the pond by the Geese Police they will be able to permanently scare the birds away to a location less frequented by people. LaPorta said an ideal relocation would be the nearby Patuxent Research Center. The city is contracting through March for $9,500 on a trial basis, Deutsch said. But if it shows success he said the city may bring the Geese Police back less frequently for maintenance.
In other areas in Prince George's County where the Geese Police have worked, including parks in the city of Laurel and the Suitland Federal Center, LaPorta said he usually sees a 90 to 95 percent reduction in the number of geese that flock to the sites.
"We can't promise you we can get rid of 100 percent of your geese 100 percent of the time," he said of the variables of the job.
Within the few days he's been working Allen Pond Park, LaPorta said the geese have already responded favorably. While he estimates several hundred geese were at the park before he started bringing the dogs out, by Monday only a small flock was left congregating on the water. As soon as Oren paddled himself and a dog out toward them in a kayak, the geese immediately took flight. When working in the water LaPorta said he either sends the dogs into the water after the geese, or takes a dog close to the geese in a kayak to stare them down.
The company uses border collies because of the wolf-like stare particular to the breed that will influence the geese to leave the area. Due to the high intensity of training the dogs must go through to be selected for use, they each cost between $6,000 to $8,000.
Geese Police was founded in 1996 in New Jersey and LaPorta started running a franchise in Maryland four years ago. He laughs at the idea that the geese he pushes from one area simply creates more business for him in another, wishing it was true. After interactions with the dogs however, he said the geese tend to move to more remote locations.
