Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Comfort Dogs in the Backcountry?

Dog scofflaw here. Assuming the dogs are always leashed on the trails and they are not disease carriers, reasons against:

(1) Dog haters. You are ruining their wilderness experience with your stupid pet. Kind of ironic that, if they were alive today, "Dog Narcs" would swarm John Muir and his dog buddy Stickeen on his own damn trail! Also, early humans had dogs so I guess the "wilderness experience" is pre-human evolution.

(2) "Predator Scent" on the trail (a very small percent of the wilderness) dissuades criters from showing up on the trail to give you "high fives" on your epic hikes, thus reducing the wilderness experience. Then there is this "camera trap" study "https://news.ncsu.edu/2016/10/dog-human-effects-wildlife/": "“The bottom line of our work is that we have a ton of dogs using our parks, but most stay on-trail and don’t harass wildlife much".

My view:
Americans are FAT, American's dogs are FAT. Americans should be enticed to do exercise via "Exciting Big Walkies" with their dogs which is "killing two birds with one stone". It is much harder to con human friends into "going after work to do a 10,000 foot vertical mountain climb starting at midnight until our bodies feel like pain filled jelly and you are hallucinating from exhaustion and lack of sleep". Friend: "Nah, I'm good." Your dog:"LETS GO NOW!". So I am on the side of encouraging people's exercise vs weakly researched "environmental extremism".