We just got our first Europeon sit and our first dog sit at the same time. I’ve only had and taken care of dogs in a city with a scoop the poop law and so am used to picking up poop with plastic bag. We didn’t actually ask the question when we had the conversation, and will stay with the hosts the night before so I’m sure we’ll find out, but we were just having a discussion about how anti-plastic bag some places are, and so we’re curious about what people do with the poop in different parts of the world.
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It has been like that in all my sits here in Europe except for one place in France where they had paper bags and a kind of cardboard scoop. All supplied by the municipality in the dogwalking hotspots.
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You can get compostable poop bags. Some of the hosts I stayed with had them.
You do need a bag and pick it up pretty much everywhere, unless you walk the dogs in the middle of the forest where nobody else ever comes 
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@marion
Where is this sit? It sounds wonderful!
I have purchased “biodegradable” plastic bags in the past when I had dogs. The advertisement was, “Here this year, gone the next.” So…I buried some poop in the bag in 2014. I will note, they were very thin so sometimes they would rip and I would have to use two. In 2016 I decided before winter to do one last clean up of the leaves and remembered where I buried the old bag. The plastic was NOT biodegradable! So…after spending all that money on the “green” bags…back to normal plastic bags it was! Don’t waste your money buying into earth friendly plastic bags. Sometimes, you have to just use what works.
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Not that I know anything about “biodegradable” plastic poop bags. To be honest, I had never even heard of them. However, I would hope things have improved somewhat since 2014 
Small village in southern France one dog who is good at being out on day trips. At the time I applied I was very eager to not be in the US at that time (around Nove 5) and we are already planning to travel but weren’t sure where or what so we are using this as an excuse to blow some $ and spend a few days in Paris first. Super excited as this is the kind of “slow travel/live like a local” that we’d love to do and wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to otherwise.
I’m assumming the homeowner will have whatever bags they use on hand. I’m just curious about how things are handled in different places and wondering if there are bag restrictions. The comment about municipalities supplying bags is fascinating!
In the US, many dog parks and dog friendly places have plastics bags and trash cans right near the bags. I can not imagine using paper…what if you were only 1 mile into a 10 mile hike and have to carry it out? Will that paper bag actually holdup for that long??? Even places in the US like Seattle, San Francisco and Portland use plastic here for such purposes…it is dog poop after all…
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@Marion
Sounds wonderful! My grandparents loved the South of France and I travelled with them there three times when I was a kid. Happy memories!
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Our dog passed away in 2012, but when he was alive, we as dog owners had to pay an annual fee to the municipality, which they used towards bag stations, bags and disposal.
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I bag and bin. Some owners in the UK put it down the toilet but I won’t because I’m aware of how bad that is for marine life. I buy my own bags in case owners run out. In Australia you can pick the bags up for free at most beaches.
I live in a very rural area in the north of England. We all pick up dog poo here with our dogs. Its the odd holiday maker who thinks as its on the grass verge its ok to leave it. I use bio green bags and they go in general waste.
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When in Spain, we were told to pick the poo up and to have a squirty bottle of water with us to squirt water over where it had been. We were asked to squirt the dogs wee with the water bottle too. In the area we dog sat in, that was the norm apparently to apease the residents who lived around the area. Made sense really.
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Thanks. I’ve seen a few people squirt in the US, but I don’t think it’s caught on here at all, and I wouldn’t have throught of it!
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I’m a sitter in Canada and most parks supply poop bags and there are thrash cans everywhere to dispose of poop along with signs reminding people to “clean up their dog poop”!
Good that you mentioned it. I was just going to ask about this when
I saw this thread. As far as I know, that’s the norm everywhere in Spain. Although it is the municipality that sets those rules and the fines for breaking them, so there could be places where it doesn’t apply. I always carry a bottle of water and see people with it everywhere. Not everyone, but most people.
When I first started sitting outside Spain I noticed people didn’t have the bottle of water and thought it was because there was more rain and the smell didn’t stay for long but then I went to Australia and my reasoning was no longer valid.
Compostable bags are not worth it - dog poop mustn’t be put in a compost bin/heap. They also contribute to bad gases in landfill, which is where most UK bin waste goes (I say “most” because where I live the non-recyclable household waste is burned for energy).
Biodegradable bags are often simply plastic that decomposes into teeny tiny bits of plastic, so not brilliant. And they may be made from new plastic, using non-renewable resources.
The bags that I take on dog sits (so I am using what I want to use) are either made from 100% recycled plastic or from a plant source - it depends on what I’ve got to hand.
I tend to take my own dog poo bags to a sit. I have been caught out too many times by hosts supplying the flimsy type. I used to end up ‘double bagging’ which is a false economy.
A fellow sitter friend bought me a great cross body bag which is big enough to hold the essentials, keys, hand gel and the poo bags are dispensed through a designer hole in the bag.
Very posh!
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THOSE…do not restore nature!!! See my post above. And since 2014 thru today, plastic is still made from petroleum products…perhaps using LESS petroleum content is more green than using a lot of petroleum content…but the one thing in common between someone that drives an 18-wheeler and someone that drives a 2 cylinder micro-car…they are still burning petroleum.
Don’t waste your money on “green” plastic. Buy the most affordable or simply use paper bags…