I spend several hours each day volunteering with a few others from our town to help restore one of the most historic and special places on our peninsula, Laurel Grove Cemetery.

Our area’s history is literally written here in stone. Nearly all of the founders of our town have been buried here in this place since the Port Townsend Masonic Lodge founded it more than 140 years ago. Because of the work being done here, it is once again becoming a wonderful place to reflect, walk amongst the past and to pay respect.

Yet every day we also watch as more than 30 people and their pets parade through these sacred acres as if it was their own private off-leash dog park.

We all love our dogs in Port Townsend, yet here in a most sensitive location, it shows in the poorest way possible. Tennis balls are flung and bounce off marble monuments; tossed sticks scar the carefully scrubbed marble names and dates; floral arrangements left by families and friends are repeatedly soaked in urine or upturned and dragged apart to new locations.

The diggers in the group head for newly filled graves to see what lurks beneath the fresh surfaces, and the plots and headstones are repeatedly soiled by dogs that have obviously been fed way too much fiber. Pick it up? Why bother?

All sizes of dogs race unleashed to poop, spray, knock down grave markers, wrestle and chase each other recklessly as their owners look on, unable to control them. Some owners rock back and forth on fragile, century-old tombstones mindlessly talking on their cell phones, while others climb onto memorial benches searching and waiting for their dogs to return from wherever they have traveled.

A few more owners drive in daily and unleash their dogs. They then drive around the property in circles as their large pets chase the owners’ vehicles or race off to challenge another dog several hundred feet away.

Wet or mud-soaked animals, looking to “see what the big attraction is over there,” have dirtied, sniffed and harassed funeral attendees and individual mourners in more graveside instances than I want to recount.

When I, or another volunteer, have attempted to remind them that more than 4,500 good people have chosen to make this ground their respected last resting place, we are rebuffed with intentional refusals to comply or insults and rhetoric that should never be heard in public, let alone on sacred ground.

Private property signs have been posted by the lodge, and in some cases, trespass warnings have been given by the police, yet somehow the impression has developed that this cemetery is now a public dog area and no longer a place for memories, ancestors and history.

Laurel Grove Cemetery has literally gone to the dogs.

We owe what we hold dear here in Port Townsend to the people who rest here. As citizens of an exceptional place like this, we are better than that.

Volunteer Bruce Miller is a third-generation Port Townsend resident. Many of his relatives, including aunts, uncles and grandparents, are resting in Laurel Grove Cemetery.