Tove Danovich is a writer in Portland, Ore., and author of the newsletter “A Little Detour with Tove Danovich.”
The Pacific Northwest is a dog-friendly place, and I see dogs everywhere I go. Dogs run around on tennis courts. They travel on planes. They eat out at restaurants and hit the bars. They go paddleboarding. They even carry the bride’s and groom’s rings at weddings.
It’s a vast understatement to say they walk among us. Dog ownership remains close to its pandemic peak — as recently as 2022, 69 million American households had at least one — and it seems that wherever we go, we take our dogs along.
I have no problem with dogs being part of the family. But sometimes even family should get left at home.
Of the 33 parks in my portion of Clackamas County near Portland, only one does not allow dogs. No, not even leashed. Not even if they’re very good.
And even that one park is under siege. I know because of a large sign posted there. It explains that, yes, they really do mean no dogs. Why? Because dogs can damage the area set aside for sensitive native plants and animals and spread disease. The sign goes on to say that birds and other animals think of dogs as predators — “(even the friendliest ones)” — and the presence of one dog, even leashed, will disrupt their normal behavior. Multiple scientific studies back this up.
Yet when I went for a walk there last month, it wasn’t long before I heard a jingling collar behind me. A man had decided to take his dog for a walk on the trails unaware, or perhaps uncaring, that his pet wasn’t allowed.
I also like to take my own dogs for adventures to scenic places and nature areas, but I don’t think they care much about our destination. They spend their time sniffing the ground or chasing each another. I’ve noticed they’re just as tired after a long walk around the neighborhood as they are from an Instagrammable hike through the forest. I doubt the dogs get much out of the view. On a cross-country trip years ago with one dog, Mesa, we stopped to walk around the rim of the Grand Canyon. I was awestruck. Who wouldn’t be?
Answer: a dog. I suspect Mesa was just happy to have a chance to pee and stretch her legs after a long day of driving. She would have gotten more out of going to a dog park; I might have gotten more out of my visit if I’d been able to enjoy the view without tending to her.
This is more than just cracking down on owners who let their dogs roam in places where they’re required to be leashed. The infamous 2020 altercation between a Black man birding in New York’s Central Park and a White woman stemmed in part from her refusal to follow the law and leash her dog. The rules are there for a reason.
But following leash laws — and we should — is just the start. Even I, a dog owner, think we need to work harder at removing the presence of dogs from some areas. Because when we do, a whole world (and the wildlife living in it) can show itself to us.
In the hour I spent at the county’s nature park, I saw more wildlife than I’d ever encountered so close to home. After pausing to take a photo of a flower along the trail, I looked up to see a doe standing directly in the path in front of me. We stared at each other before she ran off into the brush. Birdsong trilled over the sound of the nearby freeway. I wasn’t far from civilization, but it felt like a different world.
Later on, while sitting to take in a quiet moment, I watched as a rabbit popped out of the bush onto the trail, ears twitching. The two of us stayed there together for a minute, maybe two. Then she ran off a second before I heard the dog coming toward us. It wasn’t safe for a rabbit with a potential predator close by.
For the rest of the trail, I walked a few lengths behind the man and his dog, a sweet female mutt with a big grin. It was one of the only places where she wasn’t allowed, yet he’d brought her here.
For the rest of the time, I didn’t see birds on the ground or rabbits or deer. The man probably didn’t even know what he was missing. But I did. He might have, too, if he’d just left his dog at home.
