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My husband and I were
driving down Macadam Ave in Portland OR in September 1996.
We were on our way from Lake Oswego to Portland one night at
about 10 o'clock. We were almost to the edge of Lake Oswego
when the traffic in front of us came to an abrupt stop. I
was in the passenger seat, and all I could see was something
in the middle of the street, which for some reason, I
assumed was a cardboard box. As we started to pass by, the
'box' stood up and starting darting through the
traffic.
Once I realized it was a
dog who had been hit by a car, my husband stopped our car, I
got out and started herding the dog off the road. Another
car pulled off the road and called the Lake Oswego police to
come and help rescue the pooch. I was finally able to get
this very scared and frantic dog off the road, and to sit
and stay in one place (wedged between the highway and a
railroad track). The small, blonde 'American fence-jumper'
was too afraid to let us come near him, so we just sat near
him and tried to calm him down with our voices.
After about 30 minutes of
sitting there alongside the busy road, a train approached,
and seeing us sitting not more than six feet from the
tracks, released the horn over and over and over again to
warn us away.
VERY fortunately, the dog
didn't budge. After another 30 minutes, with no sign of the
police, I was able to get a nearby gas station to donate a
bottle of water and a dog biscuit to our cause. we finally
coaxed the dog into the back of our car and we took him
home.
We found a name and phone
number on his dog tag and phoned the owner. A woman anwered
the phone, we told her we found her dog, and she proceeded
to ask us all sorts of seemingly irrelevant questions. she
finally told us that the dog had been missing for two weeks
and had travelled from deep in Southeast Portland (on the
other side of the river!). Her husband had been up almost
every night for the last two weeks searching and searching
for the dog. Several prank phone callers had called with
false leads, thinking it was a pretty funny joke to get the
owner to jump in his car and drive severalmiles just to find
his dog nowhere in sight. She was able to contact her
husband and within 10 mins his car pulled up in front of our
house.
'Peanut', as we later
learned was the dog's name, was still sitting in the back of
our car and his owner parked right behind us. As soon as he
saw his dog, his head fell to his hands and he started
crying uncontrollably. Peanut recognized the car and
immediately began to wimper, yip, and jump up and down. They
were obviously both VERY happy to see each other again after
two weeks.
About a week later, we
received a card in the mail from Peanut, complete with a
picture and a really nice note, thanking us for saving him
and reuniting him with his dad - Peanut's injuries from the
car that hit him were very minor.
It still makes me really
happy to think about that story.
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