THE PET PERIODICAL

THE PET PERIODICAL

How to Rescue a Dog on the Freeway

You can’t be a freeway user and not have seen at least one dog in your life trotting along the freeway—almost always going in the same way as traffic. For starters, your first reaction should be to realize that rescuing the dog is YOUR responsibility. So go about thinking how to do it.

First, DO NOT attempt to pull over right away. You may well cause an accident that way. Moreover, if you pull over too soon, he will be well ahead of you before you get stopped.

First, be sure your signal lights are flashing properly, then gradually get your car to the shoulder of the road and stopped, and open your RIGHTHAND door without getting out. As the dog approaches, speak to it in friendly, welcoming tones, gesturing for it to get in. Speaking from experience, the dog almost certainly will be glad to see a friendly face, because I can assure you that it’s in trouble and it knows it.

If you are both lucky, this will have been just the first step of your rescue. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT take the dog to the next off-ramp, a few houses down into the neighborhood there, and let it go. That will NOT BE ITS NEIGHBORHOOD, and the dog will be more lost than ever.

The next thing to do—all the while, reassuring the dog—is to look for identification such as an address or veterinarian or rabies tag. If none are available, take the dog to your own vet. These avenues of help would be much less stressful than contacting animal control, or some such avenue alien to the dog’s knowledge. Call the latter, however, as a last resort.

You will be late for wherever you were going. Use your cell phone if you have one, to alert the person or appointment you will miss. If you don’t have one, get to a telephone as soon as possible for the same purpose.

All of this takes a great deal of time—BUT IT IS TIME THAT YOU WILL REMEMBER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

LittleBill
9/21/10