“No one here gives a damn.” Jean-Marie Zaragoza is astride his motocrotte, a customised motorbike with a vacuum pipe that he uses to hoover up excrement, which is deposited into a small tank on the back of the vehicle. “They even let their dogs do it right in front of us. And sometimes it’s not even the dogs doing it – it’s the people.” He pauses, to let it percolate in. The horror.

Look up while you’re in Montpellier, and the city is all tawny limestone edifices and wrought-iron balconies, a beautiful and slightly mysterious medieval town. Look down, and it’s a shitshow. Since moving to the city, I’ve been shocked at the amount of dog poo on the pavements, squished into gratings, dolloped generously around trees, washed into a greasy bouillon by the rain. The city’s 26,000 dogs (10% of the human population is the general rule of thumb) produce around three tonnes of the good stuff a day, much of it scattered around awaiting a poorly aimed espadrille.

Zaragoza, and the city’s Brigade de Propreté et Incivilités (BPI – Cleanliness and Anti-Social Behaviour Squad), with whom I’m out on patrol, are on the frontline disarming this merde-field. Paris, which had its own fleet of 70 motocrottes until they were deemed too expensive in 2002, has a similar reputation to Montpellier; so do Toulouse, Marseilles and Nice. Indeed, France, much anecdotal evidence suggests, has major picking-up issues. A 2015 survey based on the amount of poop bags sold across the world by the company Beco Pets saw France come bottom: 3,600 bags, to the UK’s 1.85m.

Dog-fouling is a 20th-century, quintessentially urban problem

Montpellier’s Chateau d’Eau, with four of the city’s 26,000 dogs. Photograph: Alamy

It wasn’t even until 2007 that dog fouling was specifically mentioned in French law; Britain passed its own law – the Dogs (Fouling of Land) Act – back in 1996. In Montpellier, it’s only in the last couple of years that any serious facilities – 130 bins with poop-bag distributors; dog parks (expanding to 27); dog-handling classes – have been put in place for those with the inclination to scoop. But can the French be made to care? And if so, how?

Dog-fouling is a 20th-century, quintessentially urban problem: before the arrival of the automobile, the ordure you had to worry about was from horses. Dogs were low down the list of problems; plus there was a commercial incentive to pick up dog faeces because tanneries used it to taw skins. In Montpellier, every so often at heel-height there’s an iron loop fixed into the buildings: these are decrottoirs (“shit-scrapers”). In the 18th century, when town and country were still jostling against each other, visitors might arrive at a city building with mud-caked boots, and need a decrottoir. In the early 20th century, as city dogs hit critical mass and a decrottoir was more likely to be giving off that sickly aroma, people stopped installing them.

New York was the first major city to force its citizens to pick up after their pets, in 1978, after a long legislative battle fought by mayor Ed Koch. Animal-rights groups among the most regressive opponents: they argued it was too much to expect owners to go cack-handed, as it were.

A city worker on a motocrotte cleans up after dogs in central Montpellier. Photograph: @lucalbernhe

Since then, countless cities have gingerly trodden the same path, trying to convince their citizens with the right balance of reprimands and education. And it can be done. Jon Gerlis, campaigns officer for The Dogs Trust, says that while dog-fouling is not definitively dying out in the UK, it’s now one of the most complained-about issues. “Twenty years ago, you could walk 100 metres down the street and count 10 instances of dog-fouling. Nowadays, you might see one. But that example is going to infuriate you a lot more.”

That shifted consensus is where Montpellier seeks to be. Handling dog waste is top of no one’s to-do list, so persuading people to do it is an elemental exercise in fostering that most intangible of things: civic spirit. BPI members Julien Debray and Ludivine Diguelman – Raybanned, trim, personable – are there to tease it out of the citizenry. Currently nine in number and created in 2012 not just in response to dogs, but to wider issues of street cleanliness and flytipping, the Brigade say they face a particular challenge: southerners just don’t like being told.

People here are “chauvinist”, observes Diguelman, a staunch Montpelliéraine who also played centre-midfield for the city’s football team (and now plays for nearby Nimes). Debray adds: “We do our job as well as we can, but les sudistes do what they want.” He steps over a foam mattress dumped in the street. “They aren’t very civilised.” If the Beco Pets survey is anything to go by, however, it isn’t necessarily a headstrong Mediterranean problem: Italy, with 800,000, was second only to the UK in poop-bag sales.

So what is it about France in particular? Debray cites another common explanation: “The French are too mollycoddled. They expect the state to do everything for them. They say, ‘I pay my taxes, so you should pick up our shit.’”

A special fenced-off dog area in a park in southern France. Photograph: Jacky Chapman/Alamy Stock Photo

One group who don’t pay tax but the Brigade deal with often are the homeless. On patrol, we walk past plenty of rough sleepers, sitting in odd nooks, waiting expectantly on shopping boulevards, and more often than not with a dog in tow. A big presence in Montpellier, there’s heavy overlap with the local outpost of itinerant Euro-crusties and Roma. Lots of people blame these punks à chiens for the deluge; others say they make convenient scapegoats for regular, irresponsible dog owners. The punks’ lack of ID papers means it’s difficult for the BPI to sanction them. “They like playing games with us,” says Debray.

This only highlights the BPI’s overall lack of agency: they can report malfeasance and issue spot-fines up to €450, but they have no legal right to demand ID. They also have to catch people in the act. And emblazoned polyester and epaulettes are likely to make a prospective pavement-pepperer disappear faster than you can say chocolate Mr Whippy. Debray and Diguelman say they’ve suggested plain-clothes patrols, to no avail so far.

In any case, the municipality say they’re moving away from wielding the big stick. “I used to think only criminal charges would work,” says Valérie Barthas-Orsal, the counsellor responsible for Montpellier’s highways, and by extension any excrement upon them. “But it isn’t true. Coercion only ever has limited effects. We prefer a pedagogic impact. And education takes time.” She cites the city of Metz, in Moselles, which once issued 5,000 charges for cleanliness issues a year, “and it didn’t resolve the problem”. She prefers face-to-face engagement, to employ the same nurturing tactics that worked in her previous profession of primary-school teacher. “I never gave in to my pupils, I never grumbled in front of them. And they always succeeded because I put in my place an environment conducive to learning. And this is the same: we offer an environment in which people are encouraged to change their behaviour.”

So-called punks à chiens are often blamed for some of Montpellier’s dog waste problems. Photograph: Alamy

This is a discreet version of the softly-slowly approach that has transformed British dog ownership to the point where, says Gerlis, carrying poop-bags is “almost commonplace”. Successive campaigns, like the Dog Trust’s The Big Scoop and others from Keep Britain Tidy, seem to have burrowed into the national psyche – partly by instilling the message at an early age in schools, before children take over the walking of family dogs. Debray and Diguelman do the same on a one-to-one basis, but say they’ve never seen large-scale campaigns in France.

There is also a current fad for technological solutions, like the “canine CSI” being put into place to DNA-test dog-stools in Tarragona, Spain and the London borough of Barking and Dagenham. Presumably any owner willing to submit their pets for a DNA swab – necessary if the scheme is going to work – isn’t likely to be on the dog-fouling most-wanted list anyway. Streetkleen, the firm providing the technology for the Barking scheme, argue that signing up to such a database is an important step in creating a kind of community consciousness that can guilt-trip squeamish dog-walkers into doing the dirty.

But Gerlis is sceptical: “A lot of these moves are largely for press coverage – to shout to constituents: this is what we’re doing. The sad truth of the matter is that they tend to disappear quite quickly. All you need to do is to encourage people to pick up through education. It’s not sexy, it’s not exciting, but it’s the only thing we’ve found so far that works.”

On the Place de la Comédie, Montpellier’s central esplanade, that day of civic enlightenment still feels distant. One of the resident crusties, lolling in the sun with his scratty hound, raises a sarcastic index finger in the air as our patrol passes. Watching your step will continue to be part of French life for now because, says Debray, “that’s how society wants it”. He sweeps his gaze past the finger and moves on.

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