💔7/21/23

 Today was horrific. We were excited for our trip when we woke up. Paul was nervous and doesn’t like traveling but Avery and I shared excitement. 

Paul finished up packing his things and cleaning up the house before he left for the day at work. Avery went off to work and I started working as well.

In the middle of the day, I moved out to the screened in porch and let the dogs out as I finished up a phone interview. I could hear Penny barking her brains out.

I started to call for her and was getting to round the corner and heard a terrible noise. A thud. A deep thud. A sickening thud. There was some sort of accident. I started running toward the noise and saw a car pulled off to the side. I saw the body in of a large yellow lab/Pitt dog in the road. Not any of my dogs.

A man got out of his car. He was distraught. I immediately ran to the dog. It was apparent that this dog was not going to make it, but he was “still alive” in that he had a heart beat. I quickly told the man it wasn’t my dog and he and I talked about next steps. He called 911 to report the dog in distress and the accident.

More neighbors came out to see what the horrific noise was. Finally, the owner of the dog, a neighbor, arrived and was (as anyone would expect) hysterical. 

This dog was near the middle of the road and as he was laying there dying, cars were zipping past us hardly even slowing down. I wanted to move him, knowing it wouldn’t matter as he was already brain dead. I had to do some talking to finally convince someone to help me move him out of the road. I didn’t want this poor lady to witness someone hitting her dog’s body again. His heart had finally stopped and I knew he wasn’t suffering.

As she sat, collapsed on the side of the road, hardly able to breathe over the loss of her best friend, cars were whipping by at 55 mph. I thought this woman was going to get hit. This super pissed me off.

I decided to direct traffic as this was becoming hazardous. The cops finally arrived after about 20-30 minutes. I tried to offer support to the man that hit the dog as well as the lady who’s dog was hit. I called her vet to report the dog as deceased so she wouldn’t get reminders and also inquired about cremation.I was at least able to give them that information.

It was such a helpless situation as well as traumatizing. I can’t get that noise out of my head.

Ethan said he pretty much saw the whole thing happen. The big dog was wandering around a house or two away from his yard. He saw my dogs out. Penny started barking at him and the big guy acted like he wanted to play and blasted out in front of this car.

Penny immediately ran to the back of the house and was shaking. Ethan was traumatized witnessing that. It was so sad and awful.

I had realized I was missing a meeting I was supposed to be in on. I felt like I was more helpful to this neighbor than on a stupid meeting.

As the police arrived and intervened, I was able to Irish goodbye back to my house. It was at that time I dealt with Ethan to see if he was ok. He told me what he had seen, and heard. I was glad he was talking though. It helps to get that out. 

We started leaving to go to Buffalo to catch a flight out tomorrow to Wyoming. I just had a feeling of sadness. I just feel so bad about this poor young dog.

On our way to Buffalo, we stopped and ate dinner. That helped me feel a little better. They had $6.00 margaritas too….that helped too. 

We had a nice evening outside chatting before bed. We got laughing and joking and that helped.