I’m cautiously optimistic the dog may have escaped serious injury, but I’m really not sure. I was walking down a lane when a very large red-coated Mastiff jumped out of the window of a 4x4, and was hit by a small car coming in the other direction. A short while later the dog got up and made it to pavement to join myself myself and the driver of the car. It wasn’t walking normally, but was placing it’s weight on all four legs. The dog deported itself dog with an air of calm and dignity, except for depositing an enormous shit on the pavement and sporting a huge erection. I’m concerned about the latter, I hope it was just some sort of stress reaction rather than a sign of nerve damage. Or it might have preceded the accident, there was another Mastiff in the 4x4. If anyone could shed some light on this I’d be grateful. I’m guessing he was stunned or possibly even concussed, but was at least alert enough to turn around so he could watch his owner while he backed up his car. I couldn’t hear any wheezing, and there was little blood. The owner assured us he would take him straight to the vet.
My impressions of exactly what happened are a bit confused, as I looked up too late to see where the dog had come from. At first I thought he’d been hit by both cars. The speed limit on that road is 40mph, but both vehicles might have been travelling a little slower than that. The driver slammed the brakes on. At a guess, I’d say it hit at maybe 10-15mph, as the car didn’t travel far after the impact. There was no visible damage to the car, just some dog hair. I’m not sure, but I think it may have caught the dog’s left shoulder or ribs. It spun him out of the way, and I’m pretty certain the wheels didn’t go over him.
I’m not sure what the breed was, this is the nearest match I could find on Wikipedia. I hope he isn’t too badly injured. Just falling out of the window at 30-40mph must have done some damage.
I’m not sure if the owner was to blame at all. When I saw his 4x4, the rear window was half open, but he might have raised it as he had two other dogs in there other than the escapee.
Ya know, you don’t have to roll the window up very far before a Mastiff can’t jump out. Just sayin’.
Hope he’s OK!
Not necessarily the owner’s fault. My dog was in the backseat, in his car seat (a harness w/ a loop to put the seatbelt thru) & the window partway open. With his back paw, he managed to step on the seatbelt release (which he had never done before). Then he put his front paw(s) on the armrest, where the window switch was. With his front paw he managed to put the window all the way down (which he had never done before).
Then, DTS doggy (Dumber Than Sh__) decided to jump…at about 30mph. :smack:
Luckily for him, it had rained so the road was wet, which probably helped his landing. Also lucky for him, I happened to see this out of the corner of my eye in the rearview mirror; otherwise, I would have kept driving, thinking he was still in the back seat. Some cuts & scraps & a whole lot of shaking (adrenalin probably) but no other damage.
I’ve also learned from that incident that when he’s in the car, the childproof window locks go on!
Like I said, I really don’t know if the window was all the way down. If so, the owner was being careless. When I saw it though, it was only halfway down, and you really wouldn’t expect it to be able to get out like that.
Anecdotally, it seems it isn’t that uncommon for dogs to jump out of moving cars. Only spoke to a couple people about it today, and it happened with one of their dogs he was growing up, fortunately without sustaining any serious injuries.
Thank you for posting this. Like Spiderman, I too am putting the window lock on when my dog is in the car. Before this post, I wouldn’t have guessed she could’ve lowered the window herself and jumped out. Now, I do.
I’ve also seen a dog hit by a car and it’s an absolutely sickening feeling. I’m glad you were able to render assistance, Alka Seltzer.
My dogs both wear harnesses and seatbelts when in the car but Spiderman’s chain of events scares the hell out of me. I’ll make sure the child locks are on for any rear windows they are exposed to.
Nice job on helping out with the aftermath Alka Selter!
This is why I think it’s sick when people don’t restrain their dogs in anyway in cars. Not only is he a deadly projectile if you do get in an accident, they can and do jump out of the windows!
My sister has a couple of idiots living across the street from them - they have “trained” their little dog to walk with them off-leash, so they wander around with their dog following them. Not only is that completely illegal here, but it’s just a matter of time until the dog goes running off after something on the street and gets hit, in my opinion. We saw that happen at our old house - the people across the street from us were not careful about taking their dogs from the house to the car, and one day one of their dogs ran into the street and was hit by a truck. The poor kid driving the truck was completely not at fault, but he still killed their dog because they weren’t careful.
I’m a little anal about it with ours which is a huge culture shift from my childhood where both dogs and children used to ride unrestrained in the back of the pickup truck. In fact I used to ride sitting on the side of the box. I was much more agile as a child, now I could fall off even if the truck never moved.