How to put an end to dog poop on the streets

We’re all fed up with seeing dog poop scattered across the streets, and more than once, we’ve had the misfortune of stepping in it. I won’t even mention the nightmare of when it gets stuck in the grooves of your shoe soles, forcing you to scrape it out with a stick, bit by bit. So, what do we do? Stage a canine holocaust and wipe out all the dogs to eliminate their poop? Declare a state of emergency with the army patrolling the streets, arresting owners who don’t pick up after their pets and shipping them off to Guantanamo? I think there are less extreme solutions.
 
Many city and town councils came up with the brilliant idea of installing bag dispensers so dog owners could use them to clean up after their pets. Most owners—decent, well-mannered people—took advantage of them, and those cities and towns became cleaner, more hygienic, and more pleasant for their residents. But over time, the poop problem crept back. What happened? Simple: the same thing that always happens—great ideas with no follow-through. The councils started skimping on bags, restocking them later and later. By the time a dog owner went to grab one, the dispenser was empty, and with a heavy heart, they’d leave the steaming pile right there on the sidewalk. What were they supposed to do? Sprint home to grab a shopping bag (one of those you now have to pay for at the supermarket) and rush back to the scene of the crime? The councils’ plan turned out to be the worst possible approach: they got dog owners hooked on the convenience of readily available bags, only to stop restocking them regularly once the habit was formed.
 
Nowadays, anyone walking through these cities and towns with empty dispensers will see plenty of dog poop littering the streets. Some owners, treating them like precious treasure, carry a stash of bags they managed to snatch at dawn when the cleaning crew finally restocked the dispensers—racing to grab a handful so at least their dog wouldn’t contribute to the mess. I can vouch for this myself. Here in Madrid, on some Mondays (and only some), the gardeners refill the dispensers early in the morning… but by mid-morning, they’re already empty.
 
So, solving this problem is actually quite simple: either give the cleaning staff the order (and the supplies) to restock the bags daily in any dispenser that’s run out, or remove the dispensers from the streets altogether and replace them with signs that read something like: “Picking up dog poop is the responsibility of the owners, who must purchase the appropriate bags at… (list the types of stores where they can be found).”
 
As you can see, there’s no need for fines or awareness campaigns—just a bit of common sense and consistency.
 

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“Fleeing into silence”: https://a.co/d/7SUfVb3