Where Beagle, dog enthusiast, hits a dog and feels not guilt but intense rage

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m driving down a dark road tonight in pretty heavy rain. It’s a two lane road notorious for people suddenly turning out of driveways or side streets (we have the road crosses to prove it). The speed limit is 40. I’m doing about 35. There is an SUV pulled over to the side of the road with its lights on, but no hazards. I slowed even more to go by, good thing. As I approach the SUV on the shoulder to my right, I see movement behind the SUV moving quickly from my right to left. I slam on the brakes as fast as I can, which is pretty fast. Next instant I see a black dog hitting the right front fender-bumper area of my car. I thought it was a dog because as I hit it it was several inches from my right headlight. Before that, it was just movement. I don’t hear any secondary impacts with the tires or anything, thank God. So at least it bounced off.

By the way, this is first time I’ve ever hit anthing bigger than a duck (and didn’t even hurt that) not counting fender benders. I’m not exactly feeling all together about now.

I keep slowing as fast as I can, pull off the road about twenty yards past the SUV, and jump out to look for the dog. Ohmygod! I see a black mass in the road that looks about four feet long and only a few inches wide. The dog has been crushed. Shit! The next car by runs the black object over (thanks, by the way) and it bounces about ten yards down the road making a distinctly plasticy sound. Much later, after picking it up, I realized that it is the insert that (used to) fit into the front of my car. At the time I just thought, dogs don’t bounce.

Anyway, where the hell was the dog? I run back down the road past the SUV. I yell at the driver “what did I just hit?” I was pretty sure I saw dog, but only saw it for a fraction of a second. He confirmed it and said he had just pulled over to try to get it out of the road. It is a black dog he tells me, probably a lab mix of some kind.

I run another thirty or so yards down the road and I see the dog lying on the shoulder. I assume it’s dead, I hit it pretty hard. As I approach the dog jumps up and runs away using all four legs. Some other guy who came along is driving down the other side of the road looking for him. I’m walking in the rain for about three quarters of a mile. No sign.

The other guy comes back by and says the dog is lying in someone’s yard another half mile away (that’s one fast fricking injured dog, BTW) but won’t let anyone approach it. He said it looked like it was limping a little.

I give up. My car is already way behind me on a two lane road with no sidewalks, soft shoulders, and a small runoff.

Now, WHO THE FUCK LETS A BLACK DOG RUN AROUND AT NIGHT IN THE RAIN? You motherfucker. I refuse to feel guilty, but I feel horrible that such a wonderful animal had to be associated with such a complete bumblefuck incapable of following the most basic rules of animal care, thus leading to what must be some painful and possibly fatal injuries for that poor dog.

Second, there was a great deal of risk taking by innocent bystanders in dangerous conditions to make up for your complete and utter worthlesness as a caretaker. Several drivers got out of their cars, others backtracked to search, lots of cars pulled off on the shoulder. It could have become a massive cluster fuck with human casualties.

As for my car, I popped the fender back in place by peeling back the wheel well guard. It’s all composite. The facia is not even necessary, but would cost 200 or so to replace. None of that bothers me one bit. But, guess what fucked up dog owner? You are legally responsible for all of that. I would sue you in a second just to make you suffer. In fact, I’d love to see you moonlight as a crash test dummy.

Dogs aren’t always smart, but humans can be criminally stupid. And dogs usually mean well.

2

Sabbath?

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I have a black lab and I live on a busy 25mph street. The traffic usually moves at 45mph though. He does get out once in awhile when someone (usually a guest) holds the door open too long. It does happen. Not often, but it does.

BTW, my dog’s right here so it ain’t mine.

4

Damn you. I was thinking the same thing.

5

So was I.

THAT is why it SHOULD be “neglect” or “negligence” to let your animals run free.

6

Wow, the blood rushed to my head when I read the thread title.

I don’t drive, which may have had something to do with my interpreting the TT as ‘Where Beagle, dog enthusiast, beats a dog and feels not guilt but intense rage’.

I’m glad that I have not, as I feared, slipped into Bizarro Universe.

I’m sorry you had such a disheartening experience, Beagle, and of course I’m doubly sorry that my sporadically-firing neurons conspired to parse that sentence in such an unflattering and offensive way.

:directs vague bad mojo in general direction of the criminally negligent :

7

Don’t feel bad, Larry Mudd. I read it the same way at first. Then again, I’m just tired. :o

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As did I. Weirdness.

9

OK, I admit it. I left the double entendre. Hoping, just once, that my feeble rant might get noticed. :sad: If I can shame dog owners into being more careful I’d be happy. I’ve had dogs get out, but I was out there on their heels trying, and succeeding, to track them down–usually in a matter of moments.

Actually, I’m a bomb thrower, in a linguistic sense of course. Carnivore operators in Langley, please calm down.

I just realized driving back down that road during the day–which I do about four times a day–that I must have missed one of those road crosses by a few feet pulling off the road. I didn’t even notice it in the night, rain, and confusion. There are three in this one area. I’m thinking the “corner of death” isn’t a joke anymore.

The weird thing is that it’s not an especially busy or dangerous road. It’s just a two lane road with no sidewalks built in the days with smaller setbacks–the brick walls have the repairs to prove that one also.

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What I don’t understand is why don’t people train their dogs to obey some simple rules. . .like not running out the door without permission. It would solve problems like yours, and problems like this, and many others. Simple training, people!!!

11

I had a black’n’white miniature schnauzer. Never could get the boy to stay home. If he saw an open door he’d bolt so fast you’d think he’d been watching the Flash too much. No discipline would work. To him, the outside was just a huge, wonderful place full of fun and excitment. Some dogs are like that. Actually, our biggets problem was us putting him in the backyard. Sometimes he;'d slip his leash or would escape when we were changing his collar or something. And you’ve never seen te trouble we had giving him baths.

sniff

Memory of Rumor all wet and slippery from soap and newly cleaned, being chased by me all through the house with a towel, trying desperately to stop him from rolling all over the carpet to dry. He snogge dthe carpet when he was wet.

Waaaaaaaaah! I want my puppy!!!

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I’m very sorry, Beagle that happened to you. You’re a good person.

We live in a townhouse with a big, busy parking lot in front. You *can[/]teach your dogs not to run outside. We have older dogs & a beagle puppy (almost 5 months old) who already knows “hold” when the door is opened. I walk him on a long retractable leash & he is learning not to go into the parking lot unless one of us takes him. Our dogs don’t eat anything until we tell them they can. They sit when they greet people or other dogs. Quality obedience training is expensive and time-consuming, but worth it.

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:frowning:

I had a dog that got hit by a car. It was actually my parents’ dog but ‘mine’ as I grew up with him. He also got hit in the rain. There was a big thunderstorm that day and he was terrified of thunder, usually hiding out the storm under a chair, trembling, unable to be consoled in any way. Maybe others who have dogs who are afraid of thunder will know what I am talking about. My mom went out to get the mail and when she opened the screen door there was a thunderclap and the dog ran outside, terrified. He was never the type to try to sneak outside on a normal day, much less during a storm. She called him but couldn’t find him. As he was so afraid of the storm she was worried but thought he was probably hiding under something and would come back in as soon as possible.

A few minutes later a kind girl knocked on the door, holding my dead dog. She had seen him run straight into a nearby busy road a few blocks away, and saw another car hit him and not stop. She took the time to stop in the rain and pick him up, check his tags and return him to my mother.

My parents were loving and good pet owners. They trained him and took him to obedience classes. They knew his temperament - he was almost 10 years old. This was a freak accident, not a case of animal neglect or abuse, and if I hit a dog I would assume the same for its owner unless I found out otherwise.

My mom was devastated and I’m sure would have been even more so if the person who returned the dog chastised her for ‘letting’ the dog run loose. Instead he was returned by a compassionate young girl, who told my mom she had a dog like ours and couldn’t leave him in the road. I get angry at bad pet owners too, and have a dog of my own now. Like any good pet owner I train her and keep her confined, but I will never say there is 0% chance she could ever get away. Accidents happen.

I am not saying there are not pet owners who are irresponsible and let their dogs run all the time. I am just pointing out it is a horrible thing to have your dog killed by a car, and maybe it’s best to give the owners the benefit of the doubt until it’s shown they did something wrong. It is good to train an animal, but animals do have accidents too. I have never seen a dog that is 100% predictable, 100% obedient, 100% of the time.

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Great post, Velma. Nobody can be a perfect dog owner all the time. Nor are all dogs controllable 100% of the time. I don’t know the particular situation, but for the crash and commotion. It might have been a stray, unlikely in that area, but possible.

But, my gut feeling is that it’s just another neighborhood dog allowed to roam around. There are several around here that make walking my three dogs a real adventure some nights.

How Loose Dogs Have Seriously Complicated My Life and Pissed Me off Royally, by Beagle.

My German Shepherd dog, myself, and my old beagle were charged (while I was walking them on leashes,* by the way) by several dogs on several occasions that were just running around, long ago when the GSD was a puppy and we lived in an area with tens of thousands of apartments. These dogs seemed to sense that they had their shot at a big dog for once (or something), because in each case they’d make a beeline for my puppy while snarling. She’d pee.

In each situation, I charged the dogs (dragging my leashed dogs behind me), waving my arms, screaming, growling, spit, the whole deal. I chased these dogs for hundreds of yards to make it clear that I was not going to permit them attacking myself or my dogs (GSD puppy, then one other beagle). I even tried kicking one when it turned on me, followed by a right retractable leash cross as well. I missed with both, but he resumed running away. They are surprisingly cowardly if you act crazy enough.

Well, guess who learned from watching daddy?

Needless to say, when loose dogs approach my German Shepherd things can get a bit dicey.

*Legal significance cannot be overstated. There is a great bar question involving leashes that they use over and over again. Assault, pepper, battery and all that.

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I hear you on the loose dogs making it hard for everyone. A few months ago my husband was walking our dog when someone let their dog out the front door of their house and it charged her. My dog didn’t even see him coming and didn’t have a chance to brace herself before she got tackled to the concrete. It was a few weeks before she could run normally again (and she needed a vet visit and pain medication, too.)

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Just because a dog gets loose doesn’t mean the owner is irresponsible.

Ours got out of the back yard a few times before we figured out he was actually climbing the fence.

He’s also bolted out the front door when we’re letting someone in.

He’s still just a youngun’ and hasn’t quite settled down yet.

17

I guess it depends on what you do after the dog gets loose that matters to me. When we adopted our first beagle, a street dog, he once bolted down the stairs of our three story apartment building, undoubtedly on the scent of some migrating geese, squirrels, blue herons, or turtles trying to sun themselves by the retention pond. I chased him about 400 yards.

That’s as far as a dog has ever gotten away from me as an adult. I made a serious effort to get my dog back right away, that’s all you can really do.

OTOH, my childhood GSD/husky (I think he was a freaking wolf) once attacked a school bus tire, moving that is, was injured and ran away. A neighbor found him soaking in Sarasota Bay about a half mile from our house. I’m not going to lie, there were several occasions where my elderly parents and myself (a kid) were not quite quick or strong enough to prevent that dog from escaping. He would predict when you were going to open the door and get a running start. We replaced the screen door at least three times. Chasing him was futile on foot if he did not want to come back. My dad and I would comb the neighborhood in the 1969 Impala, the car that would not die, yelling his name. The neighbors knew the drill, they would just point as we drove up. Training? I think he would have made an excellent sled dog based on his version of heel that he and I worked on for years. You try to be the ‘alpha’ when the dog outweighs you. It was a classic case of too much dog for the particular owners.

I’m asking for due diligence. There are enough dogs with collars wandering around every night I’m a bit suspicious that the owners give a shit or consider the consequences of their irresponsibility. If you let your dog roam around, that’s basically saying “please kill my dog.”

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My uncle’s Labrador Retriever used to get out a lot because my cousins would occasionally forget to lock the gate to his run. The dog would paw the latch, get out to hunt rabbits, and get found by a neighbor.

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I totally agree with this. My dog got out once when she was a puppy - my husband and I chased her to the nearby park until we caught her. If she ever got out again for some reason I would chase her, if she was lost I would do anything to find her. I would be worried sick the whole time. I don’t understand people who let their dogs roam. I’ve come close to hitting dogs in the street a few times and I would be devestated if I ever killed a dog.

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We have a friend who lives on a busy street and had two dogs killed by cars in one year. We loved those dogs even though they were completely undisciplined, and were heartbroken when they died. When she got a new puppy, we leaned on her hard to take her to the obedience school we use, told her we couldn’t be friends any more, get attached to her dog, and see it killed.

So she did, and that dog is just one lovely companion. When we go to the house, she greets us by sitting and raising a paw for a shake, never tries to run outside. Her leash hangs on a hook by the door, and when she wants to go out, she shakes it, which jingles a little bell on it.

I know you can’t avert every possibility with obedience training, any more than you can “drownproof” a child, but the new training methods, using praise for good behavior rather than punishment for bad, really work well.

My daughter, who walks a lot, has been attacked and bitten twice in her neighborhood by dogs who “just got out when I opened the door to get the mail.” Well, dogs who run out and bite people who’re strolling by in the street need to be under constant control.

Beagle is so right. “Due diligence” is key. For the dog’s safety as well as for people and other dogs.