Fairfax County bureaucrats recently passed a new animal cruelty ordinance creating a new class of criminals.
Under the law, if you walk your dog for more than one cumulative hour in a 24 hour period, you are a criminal subject to up to one year in jail and fines up to $2,500. 
Apparently Fluffy is not supposed to get any exercise in the socialist enclave of Fairfax just outside of the nation’s capital in Washington, DC. As a highly urbanized area, many local home owners associations have banned fencing from their developments, leaving dog owners with no choice but to either walk their dogs regularly or tether them to leads in their yards.
The ordinance supporters sputter that they don’t mean to target pet owners walking their dogs. They have conveniently forgotten to tell you that Virginia law does not define what tethering means. Animal rights extremists know this. They want their laws to cover as many people as possible and make us all criminals for owning pets. The “law” will cover anyone who fastens a dog to anything for any reason.
There is no provisions in this new law that mention anything about the condition of the dog. Your dog could be literally in the peak of health and you are still a criminal. If you walk your dog three times a day for 20-30 minutes at a time, you are an criminal under the law. This regulation outlaws Service Animals and Search and Rescue dogs who are routinely leashed for more than an hour in a single day.
Try hiking with your dog, that’s tethering under the law. All tethering of a dog at a grooming shop or veterinary clinic is illegal if the dog is not under “direct supervision” of its owner. It is common for grooming shops to use a loop to hold a dog onto the grooming table while they are working on the dog. Since the groomer is not the dog’s owner, they have just become outlaws overnight.
The ordinance was hotly contested by such in-state groups as the Virginia Federation of Dog Clubs and Breeders, who rallied pet owners and breeders to contact Fairfax County. When hit with a public outcry, the Board of Supervisors shrugged them off, preferring to answer to the animal rights extremists who have infiltrated the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies (VFHS). The VFHS today is nothing more than a toddy of the lead animal rights extremists in America, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).
The vegan led HSUS is notorious for their commercials asking for donations of $19 a month to save a homeless dog or cat, not revealing that they don’t own or operate a single pet shelter in America. As the bloggers at Humane Watch have noted, as of 2015, HSUS sends over $50 million a year to their offshore hedge funds. They put more money in their salaries, perks, and retirement accounts than they ever give to an animal. Your $19 a month goes into their pockets to help them lobby to make you an animal abusing criminal for walking your dog.
When the ordinance was first proposed in October, it was hit with a firestorm of ridicule. Facing county elections just weeks later, the Board of Supervisors tabled the ordinance to wait out the results of the voting. They quietly passed it a month later when they figured everyone would be focusing on the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and not paying attention to what they were doing. Leading the fight to criminalize responsible dog owners was retiring Supervisor Michael Frey.
Knowing he is leaving office and doesn’t have to answer to Fairfax voters anymore, Frey insisted the ordinance had to be passed. Board Supervisors Herrity, Smyth and Hyland voted to defer the ordinance vote for more public input and study but Frey led the vote to overrule them. Frey was adamant and answered pissed off residents by whining that if the ordinance was misused the board could look at it again in the future.
Fairfax now brags that they have joined such illustrious areas as nearby Fauquier County in outlawing tethering. As I covered in my recently released book, F’cker County: the Peyton Place of the Piedmont, that area is the headquarters of the animal rights terrorist front in Virginia. That’s not much of a brag.
Under the wording of the new Fairfax law, all owners will be charged with animal cruelty. Dog owners charged under this law will have their reputations destroyed, more than likely fired from their jobs and have difficulty finding a new job with an arrest for “animal cruelty” on their record. Next thing you know, you’ll be listed on one of the new “animal abuser” registries sweeping America. This is by design. Animal rights extremists want us all labeled and jailed for owing animals.
Katharine Dokken is a Public Affairs Specialist at The Cavalry Group and the author of, The Art of Terror: Inside the Animal Rights Movement, available on Amazon.
Follow Katharine and The Cavalry Group on Twitter: @KatharineDokken @TheCavalryGroup
