Taking Dogs Hiking is EVIL

I really love hiking. The fresh air, the smell of the trees, the way that you get to feel so connected with the natural world around you. Hiking is connecting with a part of the natural order that you rarely get to experience in your day to day life. Maybe you'll see an animal, or hear one from far away, which is generally preferable.

I try to hike as much as I can during the warm weather, typically once every other year or so. But even though I don't do it as much as I would want to, it is a lot of work after all, I do very much identify with being a hiker. And as a hiker, I feel like it's my duty to call out bad hiking behavior when I see it. The other day I was about 30 minutes into my hike, or about halfway through and I was sitting on a rock enjoying the peace and the serenity while trying to get phone signal so my Youtube video would load, when I happened to see something that took my breath away. In a bad way, just to be clear.

Well, I heard it before I saw it. A creature. A beast that came up over the ridge of the trail, headed straight towards me. At first I thought it was a bear. Or maybe a coyote. Or a wolf. Or possibly even a mountain lion. But then I realized it was something much MUCH worse. A DOG.

The dog was on a leash, thank god. But it was a very long leash, held by a man who seemed totally oblivious to the heinous act that he was currently committing. He was looking around at the trees and smiling which is NOT proper hiking decorum! He must have heard the dubstep coming from my portable speaker because he was looking right at me as he crested the ridge, but looked away as we made eye contact, because I of course mogged him immediately.

His dog however had no such reservations. They came over to me and sniffed at me! Me! Getting smelled! How rude! At first, I thought that I may allow this man's transgressions to pass by without my commentary, however as he passed by I realized that I couldn't just say nothing. I mean, how could I, an avid hiker, let this go? By the time I decided to confront him, he had already gone by, but here's what I would have said had he not been rushing to avoid my verbal (and possibly physical) scolding.

Taking your dogs hiking is EVIL. Possibly one of the most evil things that I could ever imagine. I mean, sure, there's the way that they can be disruptive to other hikers as you walk, and unlike my dubstep it's not like it's motivating the people around you to keep going. No, I mean it's evil for the dogs themselves. Outside of being an avid hiker, I'm also an avid animal advocate. Back when I was a teenager my family had a dog, and I walked them on Tuesdays and Fridays, so you could say that I'm pretty much an expert when it comes to animals and animal ethics. I even recently retweeted a post about how bad lab grown meat is, because obviously if there's no need for all the cows and chickens we keep lovingly in our care, what will happen to them?

I don't think I should have to explain, but let me do so anyway. There are a ton of reasons why hiking with dogs is wrong, but the first is that it's just absolutely unnatural. Dogs aren't made for hiking trails. Sure, they may in some loose sense still be animals, but hiking is a uniquely human activity. Dogs are supposed to live in human houses and on human streets, not in the wild where it's potentially dangerous. Hiking is objectively more potentially dangerous than just taking them on a walk around the block, or even more appropriately, letting them into the backyard for their allotted outside time. To bring them hiking is to introduce unnecessary risk to their lives, that provides them with no material benefit. I mean, what if they encounter a wild animal that kills them! What if they step on a rock and hurt their paws! What if they trip and fall and roll down a hill into a river where they get pushed down with the movement of the water and that river goes on and on until it ends up in the ocean and then in the ocean they get eaten by a shark! There are just too many risks when it comes to hiking, and of course you can't explain to a dog that they might get eaten by a shark if they go hiking, so obviously you shouldn't take them hiking!

And, I can hear people thinking as they read this, complaining that dogs ARE animals. And to that I say, that would mean hiking is still wrong! Animals are supposed to do animal things, not human things! Hiking trails are made for humans, by humans. It's about the escape to nature, not about living within it! Dogs don't understand the concept of human hiking. To them, they might think that it's normal for them to be in the woods, but it's up to our superior human intellect to let them know that actually it's incredibly immoral to hike for them. Especially WITH a human. Animals can hike with other animals just fine, but we introduce an element that makes it fundamentally inappropriate! Either they are wild animals and therefore we shouldn't be doing human things with them, or they're sub humans in which case we shouldn't be engaging their baser animal instincts! Or both! It's just common sense!

And all of this isn't even to mention the potential diseases that might come out of hiking! I mean, there's all kinds of wild things out there. Have people already forgot about covid? I mean, that came from animals or something, right? And AIDS! And that new one with the cruise ship and the rats, I don't really know. But, I know that the world is chock-full of diseases! By taking your dog hiking, you expose them to diseases they would never otherwise encounter, and then they could give you those diseases, and then you could give them to everyone else around you. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that hiking with dogs could in fact lead to the end of the human race as a whole. It's selfish! Dogs should stay in their perfectly tailored environments where they can't get exposed to anything that might then infect us. It's for the sake of all human kind!

If that's not enough though, have these fake "hikers" even considered that there's no way that an animal could consent to hiking? I mean, I'm sure that when that hiker I encountered got to the parking lot, the dog SEEMED excited to be here and outside, but that's just a dog's natural response to being outdoors. It's their instincts, you can't say that that's them actually consenting to going on a hike! And sure, they're the ones doing the walking, it's not like the human is forcing them or anything. But, dogs are stupid! They don't understand that they shouldn't be hiking! It's not like they're consenting to the activity, they're just doing what they think they're supposed to be doing! They might walk, but that doesn't mean they know what a hike is, or that it's inappropriate! They just know they're outside walking! But that's totally different! That's not consent!

And, what if actually the human is forcing them! I can't imagine a dog actually WANTING to go on a hike. No, the human they live with, that they TRUSTED, probably conditioned them from youth to think that hiking was normal. It makes me sick picturing some gross man taking an innocent puppy out to the forest and pushing them to hike little by little until it's something they eventually just do because they've been GROOMED into it. Or, maybe they use treats as a reward, those sick bastards. I used to give my family's dog a treat every time they sat down. I saw that same terrible man give their dog a treat as I was leaving (I decided to go straight home after seeing the dog, I was too angry to enjoy nature). It's clear that they're conditioning the dog into associating hiking with treats! It's absolutely VILE. Teaching a dog to sit is natural. Dogs sit all the time. But forcing them to hike with this blackmail bribery carrot and stick TORTURE is absolutely not the same thing!

Dogs have the mental intelligence of a 5 year old, that means that they're totally incapable of making any kind of decision at all. Anything that a dog does is entirely influenced by the human in their life. Which means that it's up to us humans to tell other humans when they do things that are wrong, such as petting dogs or taking them hiking or any other such thing in which the dog doesn't know enough to understand that it's an evil act. To take them hiking is to take advantage of their stupidity to force them into something they don't really want to do. They just know we expect them to do it.

I've puked four times while writing this, just thinking about how awful that experience was. I just can't stop thinking about that poor, poor dog, living with an owner that mistreats them like that. I think all those people that take their dogs hiking should probably go to a mental institution until they can hopefully be lobotomized or shocked into understanding just how evil they really are. Until then, it's up to us. We need to let these people know that they're terrible, and abusive. Enough is enough. Hiking with dogs is evil. And if you're someone who thinks it's okay to take dogs hiking, all I can say is this. Get help.

Article written by A Concerned Citizen (June 2026) 

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