the accompanying drawings wherein like reference numerals refer to the like elements throughout the embodiments are described below in order to explain the present invention by referring to the figures there are approximately 78 2 million owned dogs in the united states it is estimated that 39 of all households in the united states own at least one dog because these animals cohabitate with humans it has been extremely difficult to develop technologies that can discriminate between human and dog fecal pollution dogs and their owners are known to frequent beaches lakes and parks situated near recreational water ways or storm sewage drains that discharge into local waters studies have shown that dog feces contains very high concentrations of enterocococi a general fecal indicator bacteria recommend by the u s epa for national ambient water quality criteria designed to keep the public safe from exposure to fecal pollution thus it is impossible for a water manager to determine if high levels of general fecal indicators i e enterococci at a local beach where both human and dogs are present originates from humans humans and dogs or just dogs the host associated technologies described here have several advantages over prior methods first our methods can differentiate between the select animal and other animal fecal pollution sources second our methods target non ribosomal genes predicted to be involved in host associated metabolic activities these genetic targets have never been used to develop host associated fecal technologies for these animal groups third our methods will work with populations from across the united states where as it is currently unknown how effective prior art technologies are in this regard fecal samples were collected over a wide geographic range during transit.