The Dog Days of Smuggler

May 23rd, 2008 at 07:32pm Keith Hemstreet 8

I read in Friday’s Aspen Times that off-leash dogs may soon be allowed to run free on Smuggler Road. Judging by all of the un-leashed dogs you see scampering up and down this popular hiking trail each day, you’d have thought this was already law. Would I have known that dogs were required to be leashed, I would’ve have strapped a billy club to my belt and made hundreds of citizen arrests by now.

Smuggler Mountain has become a dog’s mountain. I, as a human being, no longer feel welcome. In fact, sometimes I feel downright uncomfortable. For example, the other day I came hiking around the corner, whistling “Zippity do-da,” only to interrupt a pack of dogs intimately sniffing one another’s asses. Please, dogs. Have some decency. Keep your ass sniffing confined to the privacy of your owner’s bedroom. I know, Aspen is a hedonist’s retreat, but this isn’t ancient Greece.

While on the topic of man’s best friend, I implore the City Council do something worthwhile and assemble a Dog Shit Task Force that is responsible for prosecuting dog owners who allow their mutts to crap anywhere they please? On my last hike up Smuggler, I counted 724 piles of dog shit. And those were just the fresh piles. To give you an idea of the volume we’re talking about, if you laid it all out, tip-to-tip, the dog shit on Smuggler Mountain would stretch to the moon and back, twice.

Aren’t we able to convert shit into energy these days? If so, City Council should build an energy conversion plant on the outskirts of town (and by "outskirts" I mean no closer than Rifle), arm the tree hugging staff of the Environmental Department with pooper scoopers, gas masks, and send them into battle. On any given day, a dedicated staff could probably scoop enough feces to leave a “flaming bag of shit” in front of every home in Aspen.

Now there’s an idea that I might just pursue. Next time you hear your doorbell ring, I suggest you be afraid. Be very afraid.

Hemstreet previously wrote of his dislike of lazy dog owners in a blog titled “Negligent Scoopers, Beware!”

Entry Filed under: Environment, Politics, Aspen, Colorado, Comedy, Pitkin County, Hiking, Outdoors