Sometimes, they put it in other people's trash cans.

A pooper scooper feels unnecessary. Waste of space in the house (plus you have to clean the poop off it, somehow), and annoying to carry around while walking the dog. Feeling poop through a plastic bag isn't so bad. I try to organize our walks so I'll be walking by a city trash can once she's done, so I can toss it in.

I remember the scoopers. TPS hs it. They are unwieldy and awkward and become dirty and then they need to be cleaned. How are you going to clean it - in your kitchen sink? Ick. Then they have to be stored in such a way that you aren't poop-enizing the storage area with bacteria or anything. They often didn't pick up poop so much as smear it around and then you often had to juggle the poop into your plastic bag anyhow. If you didn't use a bag, what were you supposed to do - dump poop straight into a trash barrel that was going to sit around in the sun? No thankee.

When you have pets you get used to doing a lot of stuff that you might have found gross before, and it's not a problem really - it's just the way it is, and if you love the pet and take care of it, you do what's necessary. The bags are easier, they work, they keep your hands clean, and keep trash cans clean.

As far as the bags, you take them home and toss them in your trash, or you toss them in public trash cans in the parks or wherever you happen to be. The plastic really minimizes any odor escaping, especially if you take your trash out a lot, which if you have pets you probably do anyway.

(This will probably quick out non dog-peoples,) but I've been known to carry a bag by the "bulk" on really cold days as a mini hand-warmer. But I spend a lot of time collecting and running fetal samples and expressing anal glands and worse, so I know I'm at the extreme end of the "totally used to it" spectrum.

The other good thing about the bags is that it's really easy to find biodegradable ones. Makes me feel better about tossing 'em in the trash. Years ago, I had a client that found some made of the corn-based faux-plastic, which I thought was really cool until I noticed that they were imported from Scandinavia, which seems to not just defeat the purpose, but pulverize it.

Being a newish dogparent, I've never used an old-style pooper scooper. They look completely unwieldy; Dog (oblig.) and I walk for miles at a time and I haven't any interest in carrying one with me. Plastic bags are much better. When we're on a long walk with no available trash cans, I keep a small binder clip on the leash and hang the full bag from the leash. That frees up my hands.

Also, and this is almost certainly TMI, my dog eats a varied diet. I like to know when she's getting, um, bound up so I can add some pumpkin or brown rice to the mix.

the corn-based faux-plastic

That stuff also doesn't degrade in either a typical landfill or a home compost pile, so it's part of the problem, IMO.

My neighbors sidestep the problem neatly; they just don't clean it up at all!

My mom recently got a companion doggie. His name is Max and he is a rescue. Mostly Shi-Tzu and some other kind of small dust mop. Anyway, once we got him used to going out. Going up and down stairs. He was scared to death of stairs and outside because his previous owners never took him out. I know, hard to believe.

Anyway, my mom walks him with a plastic bag and a bunch of paper towels inside it. When he does his stuff, she uses a combination of the paper towel inside of the bag to pick it up. It is the tied and carried home to put in our outside garbage pail.

The wife and I use the same protocol. The paper towel in the bag lessens the feel of squishy dog poop and heat that might otherwise make on a bit woozy at 6 AM before coffee. A dog's body temp is about 102 degrees and so the poop behind just plastic can be a bit... unnerving. The layers of paper towel help immensely.

The idea of using a device that looks like the toy that a child would use on the beach is not an option.

Sorry for the TMI. YMMV.

BTW, If i ever catch someone throwing an open bag of dog crap into my garbage pail again, they won't just get a calm warning. It has happened before. Next time, it's an early breakfast.

Oh heck. BTW. Max.

Pooper scoopers always remind me of this guy I had one date with during college. He had an awesome dog, a big lab-shep mix and as part of the date, we swung by his apartment and picked up his dog for a walk through a nearby park. A few minutes into the walk, the dog lays an enormous dump on the grass and the guy whips out a little silver folding shovel that until that moment I hadn't noticed was clipped to his belt in a leather holster. Date quickly and efficiently digs up a patch of turf, uses the shovel to push the dog shit into the hole, slides the sod back into place and then folds the shovel back up and puts it back into the holster.

You could say I was completely gobsmacked and for the rest of the hour or so of the date, all I could think of was Poo Shovel HANGING OFF HIS BELT AGGGGHHH!!!WTFBBQ!!!

I declined the offer of a nightcap and subsequent invitations a second date.

Jamaro. Rule 34. Eventually he found his perfect other.

I've always thought that scoopers were only useful for cleaning out a large backyard all in one go, and that's the only way I've ever seen them used.

Scoopers are just specialized "lobby dustpans" which are useful for cleaning large areas as they keep you from having to bend over and pick things up a thousand times.

I never thought anyone would bring one with them while walking their dog. Did people really do that?

As I recall, before pooper scoopers, people used the strip of grass on the other side of the sidewalk, which is what I always thought was the main reason people invented that strip of grass.

Then when people got fed up with that, they started to use the pooper scoopers. The great thing about the scoopers was you just dumped the stuff in the sewer openings under the curb.

I mean the dogs used the grass, not the people.