How to Handle Dogs on Your Pool Route

A dog-friendly backyard can turn a routine pool stop into a safety problem, a chemistry problem, and a pricing problem all at once. We’ve both seen it: you open the gate with your hands full, a dog tries to bolt, and suddenly you’re one misstep away from chasing someone’s pet through the neighborhood. We share simple habits that prevent the chaos, including how a quick distraction (like a chew treat) can buy you time to get inside safely and keep the gate secured.

Then we get real about the risk most pool techs don’t want to talk about: even a “nice” dog can bite when it feels sick, threatened, or territorial. We walk through practical boundaries, what to watch for, and how to decide when an account is no longer worth it. We also cover tools some pros keep on the truck to create space and stay safe, plus why avoiding the incident in the first place is always the best plan.

Finally, we tackle the elephant in the room: dogs swimming in the pool. If you’ve ever seen cloudy water, rapid chlorine loss, hair-packed skimmers, or a filter that looks like it swallowed a shedding machine, you know the struggle. We lay out a clear pool maintenance strategy using weekly enzymes, extra chlorine planning, longer pump run time, more frequent filter cleanings, earlier cartridge replacement, and “enhancers” like PoolRx paired with borates or phosphate remover. We also talk equipment that makes life easier, including suction-side cleaners with canisters and solar surface skimmers that keep dog hair from clogging baskets.

If you service pools, this is the playbook for keeping dog pools manageable and making sure the customer pays for the extra load. Subscribe for more field-tested pool service advice, share this with a tech who needs it, and leave a review with your wildest “dogs on the route” story.

We break down what dogs in the backyard really mean for pool service, from gate escapes and barking chaos to bite risk and account safety. We also lay out a practical plan for keeping dog-swimming pools clear, sanitized, and profitable with the right chemicals, equipment, and customer pricing.  
• using chew treats to prevent dogs bolting through the gate  
• staying alert because even friendly dogs can bite without warning  
• recognizing when a dangerous dog makes an account not worth the risk  
• carrying humane deterrents and safety tools for worst-case moments  
• dealing with yard waste and what to do if it gets into the pool  
• explaining why dog swimming drives cloudy water and fast chlorine loss  
• adding weekly enzymes to reduce tile-line scum and buildup  
• charging for extra chlorine and leaving customer-paid shock on site  
• extending pump run time to support circulation and filtration  
• cleaning filters more often and replacing cartridges sooner  
• using PoolRx plus borates or phosphate remover for added protection  
• upgrading cleaners and adding a solar surface skimmer for dog hair control  
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Transcript

Welcome And The Dog Reality

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guide Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about dogs on your pool ground. This is, of course, going to cover dog swimming in the pool as well as dogs in general in the backyard. And I think if you do pool service, you've probably run into some of this, or not, you're going to run into one of these things in the near future. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. From me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at Summipoollearning.com. So I definitely am a big dog lover. I actually like dogs and cats and all the animals and everything in between, I guess, hamsters, rabbits, whatever. So I don't have any kind of bias against these animals. But they do make your life a little more difficult out there on your pool route. In many respects, whether they swim in the pool or not, dogs are going to cause a little bit of headache back there. So you have to take the good with the bad, I suppose, because it's kind of nice when you're

Coaching Program Quick Invite

SPEAKER_00 2:11

out there and you haven't talked to anyone for four or five hours and a dog comes running up to you and you pet it for a minute or two, you kind of feel good at that moment. So that's the trade-off is that you know there's moments where the dogs are where that where you have good moments with the dogs, but there are also moments where there are bad moments with dogs. I'll start with the first one and something that you're going to run into if you haven't run into this yet, and that is letting the dog out of the gate. And one thing that I've learned is I carry these these chicken chew treats that I get on Amazon. And a good way to prevent dogs from bolting out of the gate when you open it if the dog has a tendency to do that, is to take one of these chew chew treats and give it to the dog when you first get back there or get by the gate. It'll usually run somewhere in the backyard and start chewing it and won't have a chance to bolt out. And you have to just be really careful to make sure the gate's closed behind you, that the dog's not going to get out when you go out to get something for from your truck. And a lot of these dogs that will get through the gate are the kind of dogs that just run and don't

Gates Treats And Escape Prevention

SPEAKER_00 3:21

come back. So I've chased a few through the neighborhoods before, and it's one of those things where preventing a kind of high-speed dog chase to the neighborhood is better than actually doing it. So whatever you can do to remember to close the gate, keep the dog from getting out, implement those on your pool route. And those two treats come in really handy for those dogs that when you try to open the gate, they try to bolt out at the same time. Because you're bringing in equipment, you're you're kind of in an awkward position right there. It's not like you're just walking back there. You have equipment, you have your service cart, you have things in your hand, and so the dog has a good chance of getting through the gate if you're not careful. Another thing I think that you should really recognize about dogs is that they can turn on you in a moment. Even the most friendly dog can become you know vicious. The small dogs seem to be the most vicious, in my opinion. They're the ankle biter dogs. They're barking at you the whole time you're back there. If you try to pet him, they'll like try to bite your hand. So I just kind of stay away from those dogs. And sometimes it's really irritating because they just won't stop barking the whole time you're back there. It's one of those things where you just have to live with it, I guess, if that's the case with the small little dogs. But there are some dogs that can be friendly, and you can be friends with the dog, but if it's not feeling good or if it feels threatened, it can actually turn on you. And I've been bitten by a dog that was super friendly. I always pet it, but I guess it was sick at one point

Friendly Dogs Can Still Bite

SPEAKER_00 4:49

and it was not feeling well. So I went to go pet it, and it like grabbed my hand and like started gnawing on it. So it was I still have the scar, I can actually see it here if I'm talking. And so I guess you have to realize that they can be unpredictable. So don't put your guard down or don't let your guard down with these dogs in the backyard. Because you're not the owner, and even though they're friendly, they can turn on you. I've had Australian shepherds that were super friendly to me, and I learned later that they bit somebody, and I had one where they just wasn't back there anymore, and the homeowner said they had to put it down because it had bit a family friend really bad on the face, and they had to euthanize the dog, and it never gave me any trouble. But you always have to remember that they're an animal that can turn on you. I've had dogs turn on their owners before, and it's something that isn't, I guess, an acceptable risk at some point. If the dog is friendly, you go back there, don't worry about it. But there are, of course, some dogs that are not friendly, and you just don't want to do those pools, you know, if you have a I don't want to pick on any breeds specifically, but there are a lot of breeds where insurance companies will cancel your policy if you have one of these at your home. And I think on that list in California are Doberman Pinchers, Rottweilers, Pit Bulls. I don't know if I can't remember the other ones. There's another one on that list, so I'm just drawing a blank here. But there are dogs that are known to attack people. I think German Shepherds aren't on that list, but I really haven't any problems with German Shepherds, ironically, even though they look vicious and the police use them, they've been pretty I've been pretty good back there with them. But I've had some problems with pit bulls before and those kind of breeds. I think there's a lot of territorial breeds like the Australian Shepherds and actually Labradors are actually pretty territorial as well. So you've got to be careful with those territorial breeds as well. But if the dog is a violent dog or an animal that appears to be dangerous, I probably would consider not servicing that account going forward because chances are it's going to get free, get at you, and eventually take a bite out of you. Now there are certain things you can carry on your truck to help kind of fend off these dogs. Probably the one that is the most acceptable acceptable is I use what's called the dog taser too, and it's an ultrasonic device where the dogs don't really like the sound of it. It's a high-pitched sound that they can hear mainly and you can't hear it. You can also get a taser. Those I think are a little bit on the iffy side. Customers may not want you to use those on their animal, but just the noise of you activating the taser should scare the animal away without you having actually touched the animal with it. You can always carry mace. I have I used to carry that in a certain area where the

Tools For Handling Aggressive Dogs

SPEAKER_00 7:58

neighbor had these pit bulls. I would always get out into the front yard or front area. So I had to actually carry some mace on my service cart just in case they came up to me one time and it was a very dangerous situation. So mace is also good to have just in case. I know a lot of male carriers have like a stick with a tennis ball at the end of it. That's not a bad tool to have with you on your service cart. If you get in a pinch with a dog, just get that tennis ball on the end of the stick and you can jab it in their mouth, and that's one way to kind of humanely keep them from biting you. But again, if the dog is a risk of if you have any risk of getting bitten by the dog, I would say that account would be suspect. It's something that I would consider eventually dropping. I haven't quite got to the dogs in the pool yet. I'm still in the yard, and one thing that you have to be aware of, of course, are the bombs all over the ground, and a lot of times landscapers will, you know, enforce a rule that they won't cut the grass or go back there to do any kind of yard work unless the customer has all of the dog poop scooped up. I guess we can try to do something like that for pool service, but it may not be quite as effective. Because we're just walking to the pool and relatively safe, I guess, but uh you tend to step in, you know, dog poop every so often, at least I do. Then I'm over by the customer's garden hose, spraying off my boot, trying to get all off of there. So that's kind of like a little annoyance kind of hazard with dogs there. Now, there are older dogs for some reason tend to

Yard Hazards And Dog Waste

SPEAKER_00 9:43

just go to the bathroom all over the place. I've had pools where the dogs were, I guess, old and senile, and they were just pooping all over the place, you know, next to the skimmer, by the step area of the pool. Sometimes the dog waste will get into the pool. And I would say it's relatively harmless to some extent. You would just scoop it out with your your net and then superchlorinate the pool in that case. There's nothing really uh dangerous living inside like raccoon waste. You know, you have like a parasite in there. But as far as dogs go, I think you just follow the CPO manual with any kind of waste that gets into the pool. And that's kind of something that does happen every so often. With an older dog, they'll just kind of go to the bathroom everywhere all over the place. And now the elephant in the room, dog swimming in the pool. This is something that you can't convince customers otherwise in a lot of cases. They they love their dogs, they don't care about the pool necessarily being impacted by their dog swimming in the pool. They just figure the dogs are enjoying themselves and it's just something that we have to deal with as the pool service company, which we do. And there are things you have to implement with the customers that have dogs swimming in the pool. You can go with the old, I guess, way of saying it, like one dog is like 20 people swimming in the pool. Not sure if that's extremely accurate, but I do know that dogs do cause lots of problems with the pool water. And if you've had dogs swimming in the pool, you know that the water is cloudy. Coin level usually drops pretty rapidly in the pool. There's dog hair everywhere. There was a picture I saw on one of the pool forums. It was like they took the filter

What Dog Swimming Does To Water

SPEAKER_00 11:26

apart, it looked like Chewbacca was in there. It was like so much hair in the filter. That is a problem as well. You know, if you have an automatic cleaner with a canister, chances are it's gonna get clogged up with dog hair. The skimmer is gonna get clogged up with dog hair, depending on the breed, of course. A lot of like um golden retrievers will clog up a lot of the systems. So you have to implement certain things with these customers, so it's gonna cost them more money with the dog swimming in the pool. I would say number one, you would want to add an enzyme to the pool every week. You can you know pick your enzyme of your choice. Renda has a really good one, and you just add the enzyme to the pool each week as a preventative maintenance because a lot of times when dogs are in the pool, the tile line will start to get a scum buildup, like a kind of like a dark brown-black kind of color. It just helps prevent it somewhat. It won't prevent it entirely, but it will help a little bit with the scum buildup in the pool. It kind of also helps with kind of the gunk in the pool as well. So enzyme necessary, so you know, get a bottle of the enzyme, kill the customer for it, leave it at the pool, and add it every week. The next thing you're going to have to implement is possibly, depending on if they have a saltwater system or they're using trichlor tablets, some kind of chlorine fee for the customer because you're going to be adding more chlorine to the pool. So, what I usually

Enzymes Chlorine Fees And Runtime

SPEAKER_00 12:47

do if they're on a chlorine system is I'll buy a 25-pound bucket of cal hypo. I'll charge the customer for it, I'll leave it at the pool. So, whenever I have to shock the pool, I'm kind of using their chlorine at this time and not my chlorine to shock the pool. And of course, they're going to be aware of all these extra charges, so they're going to pay for the enzyme, they're going to pay for the extra chlorine. I usually like to run the pool longer. They don't usually fight me on this, so most customers don't even pay attention to this. I'll just turn the pump on a lot longer so it's a longer run cycle. And then one thing that I think is really important is the filtration system of the pool. And this is really impacted by the dog swimming in the pool. So a lot of times, if it's a cartridge filter, and here in California we have the quad four cartridge filters all the time. We don't really have the single cartridge filters or single bullet cartridge filters here. I'll tell the customer that with the dog swimming in the pool, normally I would change these cartridges every three years. But they're gonna have to be changed every, you know, 18 months or 24 months. And you know, maybe three or after three or four filter cleanings, I have to change out the cartridges because they do wear out a lot faster. They get a lot of oil on there, and you just have to change those more often. You may have to clean the filters more often. So typically I'll clean a quad-type cartridge filter every six months with dogs in the pool. You would probably be doing this every three months, and the customer has to pay for the extra filter cleaning as well. And these are all things you can't absorb on your pool route, by the way. And then lastly, an enhancer is really effective in pools that have a lot of dogs, or one or two dogs swimming in it. I've had pools where there were three or four dogs in it. So an enhancer or a combination of enhancers is definitely something that's gonna help you out with these dog pools. One of them that I use would be a pool RX. I would put that in at the beginning of the season, and then I would use either borates in the pool as a secondary enhancer, or you can use a phosphate remover, a weekly maintenance dose of a phosphate remover in the pool. You you would want to double up the enhancers, in my opinion, because one is usually not enough with dogs swimming in the pool, especially if there's more than one dog. Of course, it depends on how often they swim in the pool. I'm talking about pools that are used pretty thoroughly or extensively with dogs in the pool. So you're gonna have to take these kind of steps. And a double enhancer is a great way to make sure that the pool's not gonna zero out, have algae or problems like that. So pool RX, 4-8, phosphoryl, any two of those in combination is highly effective with these dog pools. A suction side cleaner is definitely a must. I had a pool where they had two husky swimming in it, which is pretty rare out there, the huskies in the pool, in my opinion. I had a husky for many years. I never went into the water, thankfully, but these huskies were in there. But huskies are very destructive besides being, you know, very f lovable and friendly. And they would always take the automatic cleaner hoses and chew them. So I was replacing these hoses all the time, but I the automatic cleaner is definitely a must. In fact, the huskies got the actually cleaner out of the pool. It was a it was a a zodiac G3 cleaner, and I don't know how they did it, but they pulled it out onto the deck and chewed the whole cleaner up. So I replaced it with a pool cleaner, the uh pool vernougen or Hayward pool cleaner. A little more durable with the dogs. They they were not able to get this out of the pool. I'm assuming they just grabbed the Zodiac G3 from the bumper thing that's

Filters Cleaners And Surface Skimmers

SPEAKER_00 16:29

on the back of it. But however they got it out, they chewed it up pretty good. So automatic cleaner, definitely a must, so that you're cleaning the dirt and dog hair out with a canister, of course, to trap all this. And then I've had really good success selling customers solar surface cleaners that have dogs in the pool. This is great for the dog hair that's on the surface of the water. This will keep the skimmer basket from being clogged up and the pump basket from being clogged up. So I really would recommend a solar power surface cleaner as well to get some of the dog hair off the surface of the pool. So it's just a matter of the customer paying for all the extra expenses that are gonna be incurred with the dog swimming in the pool. And if they're aware of that, they're okay with it. I'm fine with the dogs in the pool. You can't stop it anyway in most cases, so just implement these extra costs for the customer. It kind of live with the pool with the dogs in it. I mean, it's just something you're gonna have to do. And again, it's something that you're gonna run into out there, and I wouldn't fight it, I wouldn't fight the battle. You know, putting lawn chairs by the steps to keep them out of the pool. The customer is gonna want the dogs in the pool, you know, at some point. And with all these in place, the extra chlorine, the enhancers, the extra filter cleaning, the longer runtime, the dog pools are somewhat manageable at that point. Looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, so we poollearning.com and on the banner, click on the podcast icon. There'll be over 1900 podcasts for you to listen to and download. And also, if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at PoolGuyCoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week and God bless.