Get The Scoop On Poop With Frankfort Resident's Invention

FRANKFORT, IL — People love their pets, but cleaning up after them isn' the most fun part of being a pet owner. But when Frankfort resident Joe McCormick said enough is enough with cleaning up after other people's pets, those irksome and stinky little piles of doggy doo turned into little piles of gold — figuratively, of course. That's because McCormick decided there had to be a better way to get rid of the waste, and, voila, the Hygena Scoop was born.

About five years ago, McCormick was working for Mokena School District 159 in custodial supervision. Part of the job entailed someone to go out to the playgrounds every day around noon and get rid of the packages animals had so thoughtlessly left behind.

"It was like clockwork," McCormick said. "They'd call it on the radio. Someone would walk their dog at night and [the dog] would just go right in the playground. So [a worker] would go out there with his dustpan, sweep it into the dustpan and then go and wash it out. I thought, 'There's got to be a better way for that guy."

Turns out, there was. McCormick bought 2,000 rakes and dustpans, and from his own basement started hand-making the Hygena Scooper. He modified the dustpans to add an odor-blocking lid and hold in place a plastic bag, turning the messy process of scooping poop into a simpler, more hygienic task.

People seemed to like the idea, so much so that McCormick soon found the demand for Hygena Scoop soon outweighed his ability to produce it. So, McCormick found a manufacturer to help assemble the parts. McCormick said he now sells about 3,500 Hygena cleaners per month on Amazon and, recently, through a deal with the online pet supply store Chewy.com.

McCormick had recently made inventing new pet supplies his full-time job, fulfilling a dream to become his own boss.

"I just wanted to create my own schedule, be my own boss, and in my mind the way to do that was to innovate something, invent something," he said. "So I wrapped my mind around everything I saw, looked for the problem in the item and find the best solution to fix it."

Readers can check out McCormick's invention on the Hygena Scoop website, on Amazon or on Chewy.com.

For more news and information like this, subscribe to the Frankfort Patch for free. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app; download the free Patch Android app here. Don't forget to like us on Facebook!