From “Natural Waste: Canine Companions and the Lure of Inattentively Pooping in Public,” a study by Matthias Gross, published in the March 2015 issue of Environmental Sociology.

At first glance, dog walking seems straightforward. Walk the dog, let it poop, walk the dog home. But why is it that the poop falling out of the dog is not taken care of, and if it is, how exactly is this done? Around 2003, I started observing dog walkers and taking notes about their relations to dog excrement. (I often did this when I walked one of my three kids to nearby…