By Butch Osmond
Special to YNOT

ALPINE, Utah – Growing up, I remember hearing it over and over again: A dog is a man’s best friend. But just like some of your human friends, it turns out some dogs will roll on you in a heartbeat once the cops get involved.

I gotta say, even before finding out some mutts are hardly loyal to their masters, I already questioned the whole “best friend” thing. In my experience, no matter how well-trained they are, dogs will steadfastly refuse lie to your wife to keep you out of trouble, especially when you’ve been banging that one waitress from the IHOP down on State Street.

Confirming my skepticism about the trustworthiness of dogs, I come to find out some of the fur-faced fraudulent “friends” are helping cops sniff out people’s porno collections.

What the fuck, Fido?

I feed you, put a roof over your head, look the other way when you hump my friends’ legs, and this is the thanks I get? Ratting me out as a perv to the Utah County Sheriff’s Department?

Who’s a good boy? Well certainly not you. Next chance I get, I’m having a new tag made for you, engraved not with the name I gave you but the one you’ve earned: Judas.

Every day when I’m watching TV, there’s some kind of heartstring-pulling ad spot for some group like the ASPCA, talking about poor, innocent animals being homeless. Tears used to well up in my eyes every time one of those came on. Now I find myself wondering how many of those homeless animals aren’t dogs, but “songbirds” of the sort the cops love, if you catch my drift.

That’s right Fido, snitches get stitches — in other words, it’s finally time to get you fixed. The last thing I need is a bunch of stool-pigeon puppies running around, snooping the yard for other things they can report to the cops. Fortunately for me, there’s no actual law about having several broken-down cars in your back yard, even if they have a bunch of old TV sets and empty beer bottles piled up in the back seat.

Look, I’m not going to sit here and claim I’ve never watched porn, or that I didn’t watch some just before sitting down to write this, or that I don’t have approximately four terabytes of the stuff stored on thumb drives, CDs, DVDs and old 35mm slides I’ve been collecting since the late ’80s.

None of that is illegal, even in Utah — or maybe I should say it isn’t illegal yet, seeing as how we have a local politician with a broom so far up his ass he’s literally performing ATM every time he swallows a bite of food.

Here’s my concern, though: If the cops can train dogs to sniff out thumb drives and mobile phones, what’s to stop them from teaching pooches to plant evidence, as well? I’ve seen videos on YouTube with dogs flushing toilets, opening doors, even riding skateboards. Shit, after learning to do an axle stall or frontside 180, mastering the act of sneaking incriminating evidence into a crime scene would be a relative piece of cake.

Just listen to what one of the Utah porn-dogs’ handlers told the media: “I think everyone was pretty skeptical. Really? A dog that can detect electronics? He certainly has some unique abilities, and we’re excited to have him.”

You know what sticks out to me from that quote? The bit about “unique abilities.” Considering the Utah porn dog, “URL,” was trained by the same guy who trained the dog that busted the fat fuck of a sandwich pitchman, obviously the ability to sniff out porn isn’t one of the unique abilities possessed by URL.

So, what are this dog’s unique abilities, exactly? Can URL juggle? Can he carry a tune? Will he soon write the Great American Novel? Or is URL, perhaps, specially trained to frame the good people of Utah — possibly specifically the good, occasionally porn-collecting people of Alpine, Utah, who are just trying to mind their own business, get a little sexual release and maybe, in one case, grow a little medicinal marijuana on a six-acre plot of land he maybe, technically, doesn’t quite “own” in the legal sense of the word?

Laugh all you want about Utah and its porn-sniffing canine cop, people. I’m sure your state will get one of its own soon enough. When it does, we’ll see just how funny you think it is when one of them plants a CD full of bestiality images and a small baggie holding six grams of coke in your tool shed.

Butch Osmond is a 44-year-old resident of Alpine, Utah, who occasionally watches, downloads, uploads, masturbates to, records new soundtracks for and creates compilations of pornographic videos. What’s it to you, asshole?