Dog

No fun and games today, and here's why...

I was just about home on Tuesday night, and had made the left onto the fairly busy street that leads to our lovely subdivision.  Dark, rainy, crappy night.

Up ahead of me, I saw the form of a mid-sized dog amble out onto the road.  I assumed that the car ahead of me saw it too.

He didn't, and either didn't know that he'd hit the dog, or didn't care.  I pulled over, and was on my way back to the dog (which by now was lying right in the middle of the road.)  The next car along apparently didn't see the lump in the road, and before I could stop him/her, he ran right over the dog.

I'm not sure what fortune was smiling on the pooch at this point, but that car cleared the animal -- at least from what I saw.  When I reached her, she was lying motionless.  It took a few seconds, but eventually I did realize that she was, in fact, breathing.  Not particularly enthusiastically, but she was breathing.  A sheltie.

So there I am, in the middle of a fairly busy road (Sutter, for those who know the area) on a dismally dark and rainy night -- trying to ward traffic away from the casualty.  What do you do here?  If I left the dog and went to knock on a door, the dog would almost surely have been run over.  But what good was it to just stand there and direct traffic if no help was on the way?

Again, fortune smiled on our canine pal.  A resident noticed me, and brought out some flashlights, which helped immensely in directing traffic.  Her husband then came out, recognized the dog, and summoned the owner.

Now here's the part that pisses me off.  After the husband came back to help me direct traffic, he said that the dog was deaf and blind.  Eventually, the owner shows up, and tells us that she'd only let the dog out about five minutes previous.

My question to you -- what sort of a-hole lets a blind and deaf dog wander around by itself, just a few feet away from a street where traffic routinely travels at 40+ mph? 

Get a fence, buy a leash, do SOMETHING for Christ's sake. 

At this point, you probably want some closure to the story.  I don't really have any.  When I left, the owners were wrapping the dog in a sheet and getting her ready to take to the vet.  There was only a small streak of blood on the highway, and there didn't seem to be any broken bones, so I'm hoping that she was only stunned.  But she was an old dog, they said, and it's possible that this trauma may have been to much for her.  I'll keep an eye out for people on that stretch of road, and maybe somebody will have some info.

Comments

[deahsella]

Hey...just found your blog and wanted to say hi! The dog story... :-( Dumb owners, they should not be allowed to own an animal in my opinion. I hope you find out someday if he's ok! Anyway, I work at PSU and blog through the day, while my husband's starting a film/video business here...so I found you browsing on Blogwise for PA stuff. Nice setup!