THERE is no avoiding the fact that some elements of dog ownership are simply not fun.

We all love the walks, the playing, the running, the company, and many other canine benefits.

But none of us love the poo. No one looks forward to clearing up dog’s deposits. Or at least if you do then there are some serious questions you need to ask yourself, or some specialist websites that might be able to help.

There is no excuse, dog owners have to pick up. As the sticker on various bins says “There is no such thing as the dog poo fairy”.

I pick up an average of three bags a day (I should emphasise these are all from my hound, I don’t go round picking up random ones).

So, over the nine and half years that the hound and I have been together I have picked up more than 10,000 small black bags of canine discharge, which is a scary image.

In 19th-century London there were people who had the role of “pure finders”. This involved collecting dogs’ faeces, known as pure because of its cleansing and purifying properties and selling it to tanneries where it was rubbed by hand into the skin being worked upon to create high-quality leather goods. A tough jobbie, but the “finders” were well recompensed.

Dr Matthias Gross is Professor of Environmental Sociology in Leipzig and he wrote his doctoral faeces (sorry, thesis) on why people do and don’t pick up.

He talks of “strategic non knowledge” (i.e. we pretend we don’t see what has happened) and examines the concept of the faecal tree, where bags of poo are hung on trees and bushes as if we’re walking through the set of a bizarre horror movie.

My good friends at K9 Magazine write eloquently about how dog poo is good for composting and advertise a new dog poo wormery, which apparently the worms love and come in various sizes.

They also advocate for flushable poo bags, which sounds great until they warn that they can “begin dissolving on long walks”, which as well as being inconvenient could easily ruin your lunch.

I think I’ll stick with my tried and tested, if unpleasant, method. Here's to the next 10,000.