My neighborhood isn’t the world’s best, but nor is it the world’s worst. After dark, the streets fill with dog walkers. A couple per block, at least. In the winter, they’re the only people on the streets. Without them, the neighborhood would be lot emptier, and the streets would feel a lot more forbidding. Placing a couple of poodles — and my neighborhood has a lot of poodles — on the landscape really does wonders. Developing neighborhoods should give some sort of tax credit for dog ownership.
This is just about the dumbest sh*t I have ever seen Klein write. One, Klein should consider the dog owners that consitently do not curb their dogs and create sanitation issues throughout a mostly residential neighborhood like mine (a very walkable one, thank you). When two feet of snow dropped a few weeks back, even more dog owners took that as an excuse to run their dog outside, let them drop a deuce and leave it on the sidewalk. So much so that a walk to gym, work, coffee shop, supermarket, transit, laundromat or a local watering hole leaves me playing hop scotch around dog sh*t.
Two they add to the need for food import, increased meat consumption
Three, too many pups aren’t spayed/neutered before they can birth litters that overwhelm Animal Control Services here in Philadelphia. So yes, dog walkers are out, but so are a bunch of people who are going to and from the watering holes and coffee shops in the Graduate Hospital/South Square/Fitler Square area.
If a neighborhood is safe for adults to walk through and has adult friendly destinations (restaurants, bars, entertainment) but is primarily residential and well lit, the dog walker point is moot.
Screw his poodle petter’s tax credit. Owning a dog is a luxury. Should have a un-curbed dog tax!