Dog Owners Are The Worst Criminals! - By Matty Jacobson

This is Scout, the oldest of Matty's two dogs.
She's a Labrador Retriever, and her breed loves
to run and play and swim. Matty owns, operates,
edits and contributes to The Skewed Review.

THE SKEWED REVIEW | SPORTS & RECREATION | HEALTH & WELLNESS | ACTIVISM | LIVING IN THE CITY/COUNTY OF "NO!"

It's simply amazing how criminal it is to own and love a dog.

I spent a portion of my weekend in the Dixie National Forest area, and I always bring along my pretty little poochy, Scout.

Now Scout has been my best friend for five years now. I raised her from a puppy, and she and I have gone on great adventures to rival those of James Bond or The Three Musketeers.

Yes, by great adventures, I mean she's my long distance running partner. Or at least, she was.


I used to live in Pine Valley, and Scout and I would go out every morning before sunrise and run a four to eight miles around the valley. The place is serine when there's nobody around, and Scout can run around in the bushes and chase deer and rabbits to her heart's content.

For those of you unfamiliar with settings outside the city, you can trust me when I say that even the slowest little Peter Cottontail has no chance of being caught by my Lab, Scout. Firstly, those suckers are quick! Secondly, they can fit into so many places a Lab cannot. And thirdly, scout is a retriever. Her breed doesn't chase live animals with the intent of killing them. In fact, if she were to catch a live animal (and she caught a pheasant once, so I know this to be true), she immediately lets it go.

You see, Scout's instinct is to bring dead animals back to the owners who shot them. So if an animal isn't dead, she leaves it alone.

In any event, I was glad to be out of the city and into the forest where I could allow Scout off her leash so she can run and do things dogs love to do. It's kind of cruel to never allow your animal off a leash--especially if that animal loves to run around in areas where you can't actually go yourself.

But, no. As I attempted to enter the forest, also called "My Public Lands," the person in charge of keeping the riff-raff out told me there were no dogs allowed without leashes. Hmmm. OK.

I really, really wanted to argue that there are thousands of dogs running around without leashes in the forest, and none of them are trained and gentile like my Lab. Coyotes and wolves are scavengers and predators, respectively, and they actually kill little bunnies.

So, I'm officially starting a little group I'm calling the Washington County Animal Gurus. For the sake of the acronym, please ignore "County." So, WAG will be the people who demand we stop being treated like criminals simply because we own animals who we want to treat with the respect they deserve.

In the city? Sure. I get the leash laws. But in the middle of nowhere? Where the only person who one might encounter is basically the forest bouncer? It just doesn't make a lick of sense. Nope. No licks. It makes no licks of sense.

We need to demand that our county, which is based upon the value of utilizing our wilderness for responsible recreation, stop making us criminals for owning and loving our animals.

Amen.