I never knew her name, but I saw her every night, a young, attractive blonde waiting outside her house for company. She beckoned and whimpered and called out to me, begging for my attention, but I always turned away.

Alas, she belonged to someone else.

Dogs, what are you going to do with them?

Hour after hour, day after day, I saw the golden retriever tied up just outside a garage, and as near as I could tell that's where she stayed — always tethered to a 15-foot chain.

She was there when I took my late-night walk with my own dog, barking excitedly to tell us, as nearly as I can translate, "Help! Somebody play with me!"

She was there the next morning when I went for a morning run. She was there when the snow flew. She was there when the searing heat of July baked the yards. She was there when the leaves changed colors.

Weekend, weekdays, holidays, always there.

Her entire world consisted of a 30-foot circle, and her entertainment was whatever passed by on the street at the end of her driveway. As far as I know, she never set foot in the house, never was exercised and, most cruelly, never had human company that I observed.

There was no hope of anything better, nothing to look forward to. There was just that circle. She was sentenced to solitary confinement with no escape from cold or mind-numbing tedium.

I considered knocking on the door and asking the owner a simple question. Why do you have a dog? I considered leaving a note in the mailbox. Your dog misses you.

There ought to be a law, and maybe there will be. Later this month the Humane Society of Utah will urge Salt Lake County to pass legislation to make it illegal to tether a dog for more than eight hours at a time, or during extreme weather conditions. The last thing this over-monitored, over-baby-sat country needs is another law, but here's one that I hope passes.

On the other hand, why do we need a law to enforce common sense and decency?

"Dogs are pack animals; they've very social," says Gene Baierschmidt, executive director of the Humane Society of Utah. "They crave attention. We think people should treat dogs like a member of their family."

As I write this column, Zoee, my black lab, is sitting by my feet. She likes food, swimming and me, but not in that order. There's no accounting for taste. She could be outside chasing quail in the woods behind my house; instead, she sits by my desk waiting for her human to do something.

Sometimes I wish she had a hobby – chess, reading, TV, anything so I wasn't always The Entertainment. But dogs are devoted to their people, so there it is.