My First Real Pet - A "rescue"

Dave Brownlee

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I know this is a cat site - but I thought some might enjoy this true story.

I grew up in Southern Illinois - not that far from Kentucky - Interstate 57 went very close to our little town going to Chicago. I had a good friend (Garry) and sometimes we would go rabbit hunting in the morning (we were both about 16 - 17). We never actually got any rabbits but it was a good excuse to walk around in the wilderness with our shotguns :)

So one morning we were wandering around close to I-57 and we heard a screech of tires - so that caught our attention. We went over to the fence and stepped over it and there was a dog - kind of a small Collie mix - that had just been hit - and it was right out in the middle of the two lanes going north. I said to Garry "we can't just leave it there" (and there wasn't that much traffic in the morning.) So Garry said "I'll do traffic control and you drag it off into the median". Of course "traffic control" wasn't a very difficult task for Garry - he was a pretty big guy and he had a 12 gage shotgun - so nobody was going to mess with him ;)

I grabbed the dog by the hind legs and drug it into the grassy median area. It was bleeding pretty bad out the nose and mouth. We thought about just "putting it out of it's misery" but we only had light loads in our guns and we figured that might just make things worse. So we just left the dog there - figuring it was close to dead anyway and would expire on it's own shortly - at least we saved it from getting hit by any more cars or trucks.

We went to the H. School football game that night (primarily to look at the cheerleaders and the pom-pom girls - scouting for talent). I couldn't sleep at all that night though. I kept thinking "what if that dog is not dead and it just out there suffering"

So I got in the car that Dad had loaned me first thing in the morning and I drove to the exact spot that I had left "Lucky" and sure enough - he was right there - still breathing. So I got him in the car and took him to the Vet. A couple days later I got a call from the Vet's office and they said I could pick him up, and gave me some advice on handling a pet that had a punctured lung due to broken ribs. He lived 10 years after that whole deal :wink:

(note: My Dad said maybe I should go back to that area and see whether the original owner was missing a dog - but thought "screw it" I saved his life twice.)
 

Maria Bayote

Mama of 4 Cats, 4 Dogs , 2 Budgies & 2 Humans
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I am so glad you went back. You are the dog's hero. And I am more glad that you took him in, and gave him another 10 beautiful years of his life. Do you have any pictures?
 
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