Today we drove to Charleston. We stopped at for lunch and to pick up a couple of geocaches; the place was practically deserted and I don’t see how they can afford to pay all the people who run it. Maybe weekends are busier. Anyway, we headed to Charleston after that. Shortly before the exit for our hotel, :A: said “oh there’s somebody’s dog running around in the median strip!” We decided to go back – I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t tried to rescue him. So we drove to the exit and got back on the interstate in the other direction.
When we spotted him, we came to a screeching halt on the left shoulder. I got out and grabbed the blanket we keep in the trunk – if he was hard to grab we figured the blanket might help. I started calling “heeeeere puppy puppy!” as I walked back to him, and for a long time he didn’t seem to hear me and continued looking at the cars going by – but then all of a sudden he did hear me, and he looked back at me then bolted away. I decided to run after him, which was probably silly – who can outrun a dog?! I saw another woman getting out of her car further down on the other side of the road, and I was hoping it was her dog and he’d run to her…but nothing doing. I had to slow to a walk because I was running too hard, and the dog kind of looked around…and then ran across the road.
When I saw him start to go, I started screaming “oh no! oh no!” to nobody at all, because the cars going by were loud and nobody could hear me. (:A: said she saw the whole thing and she put her hands on her head “oh no!” style too when he ran.) He nearly got hit, he was just a little black dog and a car really did very nearly run over him. But amazingly he made it across the road unscathed and ran out of sight. The other woman got back in her car, and I looked for the dog for a while and then started walking back the quarter-mile or so to the car. Someone else had stopped right behind our car and :A: was talking to her; apparently the dog had been there since 8:00 in the morning and she suspected it belonged to somebody across the road (there were some buildings there that may have hidden houses behind them) because it seemed to be looking to cross the highway when she saw it in the morning too. So apparently I was the factor that made him just scared enough to attempt it, and I am so glad he survived…I think I would have literally lost my lunch if I had seen him get hit.
Oh, that would have sucked if he had gotten hit. You are such a good Samaritan to stop though. That is awesome.