Let’s get this out of the way: you should pick up after your dog. Almost always. With a bag. And take the bag with you and dispose of it properly.
That’s the whole article. You can stop here if you want.
You’re still reading, which means you either have questions, objections, or you’ve seen the bagged poop left on the trail and you need someone to validate your fury. We’ll get to all of it.
Why it actually matters
Dog waste is not fertilizer. This is the most common misconception and it’s wrong in a way that has real consequences.
Dog waste is high in nitrogen and phosphorus — not in the balanced, slow-release way that benefits soil, but in the concentrated, runoff-ready way that causes problems. When dog waste isn’t picked up, rainfall carries those nutrients into storm drains, streams, and waterways. The result is algal blooms — rapid overgrowth of algae that depletes oxygen in the water, kills fish, and degrades aquatic ecosystems. The Chesapeake Bay watershed, which includes Baltimore’s streams and the Jones Falls corridor we walk every day, is particularly sensitive to this kind of nutrient loading. Dog waste is a measurable contributor.
Beyond the ecosystem problem, there’s the pathogen problem. Dog feces can carry E. coli, salmonella, giardia, parvovirus, roundworm, hookworm, and campylobacter — all of which can survive in soil and water for months and infect other dogs, wildlife, and humans. Children who play in parks where dog waste is left unpicked are at real risk. The stuff is not inert. It is biologically active in ways you do not want.
One gram of dog waste contains an estimated 23 million fecal bacteria. Your dog probably produced significantly more than one gram. Do the math and then go find your poop bags.
When it’s actually okay not to pick up
There are situations. We’re reasonable people.
Deep woods, off trail, no other humans or dogs around. If your dog goes in the actual wilderness — not a city park, not a trail with foot traffic, but genuinely remote terrain — leaving it is fine. This is what wildlife does. The ecosystem can handle it in low densities away from waterways. Key phrase: away from waterways.
Your own property. Your yard, your call, your lawn care problem.
When you genuinely don’t have a bag and it happened somewhere low-impact. We’ve all been there. The bag dispenser was empty, you miscounted, the dog went twice. If it’s in a low-traffic area away from water and you’re not making a habit of it, the ecological sin is minor. Come back with a bag if you can. Most of us can’t and won’t, which is fine.
What is not fine is deciding not to pick up because you don’t feel like it, because nobody saw, because it’s raining, because the grass is long, or because you’ve decided that dog waste is natural and therefore not your problem. It is your problem. You brought the dog. You own the output.
The bagged poop left behind
We need to talk about this.
You know what we mean. The little tied-off bag sitting on the side of the trail. On top of a fence post. Dangling from a tree branch. Placed with a deliberateness that suggests the person thought they were doing something responsible and then just… didn’t finish.
They weren’t doing something responsible. They were doing something worse than nothing.
An unbagged dog poop on the ground is biodegradable. It’s a problem — we just went through why — but it is at least a problem that the environment can partially process over time. Bacteria, insects, rain, decomposition. It’s slow and it contributes to the nutrient and pathogen load we described above, but it is not permanent.
A bagged poop is plastic wrapped around organic material, sealed against the decomposition process, sitting in the environment indefinitely. The bag will outlast the poop by decades. You have taken a biodegradable problem and made it a plastic problem. You have made it worse. You took a half step and the half step is worse than no step.
The presumption embedded in the bagged-and-left-behind poop is what really gets us. It implies that someone else — a park worker, a volunteer, another dog owner, the universe — is going to come along and finish the job you started. It implies that the act of bagging was the hard part and that carrying the bag to a trash can was somehow beyond the scope of what was asked. It implies that the gesture toward responsibility is equivalent to the responsibility itself.
It is not. A participation trophy is not a win. A bagged poop on a fence post is not picking up after your dog. It is littering with extra steps and a clear conscience you haven’t earned.
Carry the bag to the trash. That’s the whole ask.
Practical notes
Carry more bags than you think you need. Dogs go more than once. Bag dispensers are empty half the time. Murphy’s Law applies specifically and aggressively to poop bags.
Tie it well. A poorly tied bag is its own problem and we don’t need to elaborate.
In summer, pick up promptly. Waste left in heat becomes a fly situation becomes a spreading pathogen situation faster than you’d think.
Compostable bags are better than plastic if you can find them. They’re not perfect — most municipal composting facilities don’t accept pet waste — but they’re better than conventional plastic if the bag ends up in a landfill, which it will.
Carry a bag for the tail end of the walk too. The dog who goes right when you leave the house and right when you’re a block from home is a very specific kind of test and you should be prepared for it.
The bottom line
Pick it up. Carry the bag. Put it in a trash can. Do this every time in every place where other people and animals share the space with you.
It takes ten seconds. It protects waterways, soil, other dogs, children, and the general social contract that makes shared public space work. The Chesapeake Bay does not need your dog’s E. coli. The trail volunteers do not need your abandoned gift bags. Your neighbors do not need to make the discovery with their shoes.
You love your dog. Your dog’s output is your responsibility. See it through to the end.
