Dog, dog, goose!

Something is delightfully incongruous about spotting a flock of Canada geese lolling on the water while driving into the heart of downtown Atlanta.

But here’s the thing. Each goose can muster about 1 1/2 pounds of poop a day. That body of water they’re on off Howell Mill Road on the city’s west side? That’s Atlanta’s drinking water supply.

“It’s gross,” readily admits Janet Ward with the city’s Department of Watershed Management. “They poop everywhere.”

That’s where John Underwood and his band of four border collies come in. Their job is to harass the geese into thinking their peaceful oasis is a war zone.

It’s not an easy task.

At the Hemphill Water Treatment Plant, also known as Atlanta Waterworks, a fence keeps out predators, the low-cut grass ringing the reservoirs may as well be a salad bar, and there’s plenty of water to drink. Ward said the geese have been enjoying the city’s hospitality “for years.”

Underwood, who brings his collies to the reservoirs several times a week under a $20,000 contract with the city, plays the part of the fed-up host kicking out unwanted guests again and again.

On one recent morning, the dogs quickly shooed off 62 Canada geese that had congregated in a corner of the largest reservoir.

“They feel very safe there,” said Underwood, whose business is called Atlanta Animal Evictions Inc.

“We’re trying to simulate a coyote pack.”

Underwood runs his collies Molly, Kate, Bud and Abby in a threatening choreography of routes to make the geese think there are more of them.

The birds are safe in the water since they can outswim the dogs and fly when they need to, but the shoreline —- where the food is —- becomes perilous to them.

The city began the geese eviction program earlier this year, as required by the state Department of Natural Resources.

Underwood also takes the dogs to the Chattahoochee Water Treatment Plant in northwest Atlanta, where the geese like to sit in the water basins.

Because the facilities are within city limits, shooting them, even during hunting season, is not an option.

But the birds can be moved.

In June, during the waterfowl’s molting and breeding season, Underwood relocated about 200 reservoir geese to Clarks Hill Lake on the South Carolina border.

Apparently, Atlanta’s not the only place in Georgia with a goose problem.

State waterfowl biologist Greg Balkcom said earlier this year the state issued 44 permits statewide —- mostly to homeowners’ associations with amenity lakes and ponds —- to “manage” their resident Canada geese under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act between March and August.

Management can mean anything from relocating the waterfowl to destroying nests to shooting some of the birds as a warning to the rest.

Balkcom said complaints about the geese typically relate to their blanketing feces and eating habits. Geese graze like cows, he said. They’ll eat the grass off a golf course green.

The National Audubon Society, after describing the bird’s loud honking and flights in V-formation as a once-anticipated sign of seasonal change, says that today, “the Canada Goose is generally regarded far less romantically. … They have even come to be perceived as pests within certain communities, where they are attracted to public parks, golf courses, lawns and waterways.”

And to think, in the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Canada geese had all but abandoned the Southeast, migrating instead from the Hudson Bay area to the Midwest.

State agencies, including Georgia’s DNR, traveled north to catch some geese and bring them here.

Now, biologists estimate Georgia’s resident Canada geese population at between 180,000 and 200,000. They no longer migrate.

“You could say it has been an overly successful restocking program,” Balkcom said. “They’ve adapted very well to life around folks and around development.”

TIMING, PRICE OF GOOSE SEASON

Hunting season for Canada geese resumes Dec. 6-Jan. 25. Hunters need three licenses: Georgia hunting license ($10), Georgia waterfowl license ($5.50), and migratory duck stamp ($15).

In the spring, homeowners can obtain U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permits to destroy Canada geese nests and eggs on their property. Log onto www.fws.gov/permits.