New Jersey Aims to Outlaw Dogs’ Happiness

New Jersey has a new bill sponsored by Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer that could outlaw transporting an animal in a motor vehicle without a harness. That means no more dogs in pickup truck flatbeds or with their heads sticking out the window.

Really, New Jersey? This is the most important thing on your docket? You have nothing better to do? Nothing at all? Everything’s just cotton candy and happiness in New Jersey right now?

I mean, what horrors could be unleashed if we continue to allow people to travel with their dogs how they choose. Clearly the current method of pet transport is abusing these dogs.

The bill was inspired by students from a Discovery Charter School after a class project where teachers asked students to draft a bill for an issue that was important to them. They wanted to draft a bill to protect their pets.

Oh, good, we’re going to let children set our legislative agenda. Fantastic. Spencer’s next bill will outlaw homework and the one after that will make pizza a daily mandatory meal. There’s a reason we don’t let children vote. That reason is that they’re basically tiny adults, but a whole lot dumber and with less impulse control.

We make lots of jokes about our representatives acting like children, but those are supposed to demean those politicians, not inspire them.

I’m not sure if the current bill is exactly what the students wanted or they just wanted to protect their pets and Spencer interpreted that as a mandate to require people to buy harnesses for their pets. Because that latter scenario would make the children the sophisticated and reasonable ones in this equation.

Fortunately there’s a competing bill to designed to protect pet owners from fines or jail time for failing to strap in their pooches.

Has Assemblywoman Spencer been taking lessons from Mayor Bloomberg on how to make people hate you? Can’t we focus instead on … I dunno … lowering unemployment or fixing our public schools. Especially if our public schools are producing minds the quality of Assemblywoman Spencer.

If anything this seems like a punishment for dogs. Dogs love going for a ride in the car and sticking their head out the window is half the reason why. What’s next on the agenda, New Jersey? Outlawing treats? Banning dogs from parks? Jail time for belly rubs?

It time we stop sitting and staying like good boys. It’s time for us to stand up and mark the car window as our territory. This bill isn’t fit for us to scoot our butts on. Let’s speak, boy, speak and make the government hear our howl. No to pet harness requirements! And an end, once and for all, to the feline menace plaguing our city streets! What? Where’d I lose you?

Point is, you can’t force people to harness their dogs in cars anymore than you can force them to drink less soda. It’s silly, pointless, and is beyond the limits of government’s role in our society. There are plenty of things the government does need to protect dogs from, Michael Vick for example. Going for a ride in the car is not one of them.

Let’s hope both bills die (because without the first there is no need for the latter) because current dog law concerning shuttling our pets place to place seems to be functioning just fine.