Man’s Best Friend? I’d hate to be the enemy…

By Tonya Poole, 3-18-06

On a long road trip at six or seven years old my mom turned around and covered my eyes so I wouldn't see the two puppies scrambling across the busy freeway, dodging cars. But it was too late, I'd already spotted them. For a long time I let myself believe they made it to the other side. In reality, I'm sure they didn't. But twenty-five years later and that image is still burned in my memory. Last year in Albuquerque after the finale of the International Balloon Fiesta in October, we rode up to the northeast heights to get some photos of a spectacular moon before riding the hour home to Santa Fe. Coming down Tramway, I grabbed Shane's arm and yelled "stop!" as a dog stepped out onto the road a few feet in front of us under the lamplight.

Shane's tires squeeled, the truck and the dog were nose to nose. Without much of an acknowledgement, he kept on walking. And with nobody coming behind us, we breathed a sigh of relief before rolling forward again. But up ahead in the oncoming lane, lights appeared as a car in the distance rounded the corner. My memory here plays back in slow motion, doubly painful. I looked back behind us.. the dog was old, moving slow, halfway through the oncoming lane now. The car ahead had to be going no less than 60. We pulled over up ahead and tried to slow them down. They never gave us a glance. I watched as the car clipped the dog and sent it spinning and tumbling onto the embankment.

I screamed out my window at the car as it sped off, barely slowing after the impact. Shaking, I got out and ran across both lanes to see if there was anything I could do for him, but I knew before I got there that he was already gone. I'm a dog lover, head to toe. It's taken me close to six months to relieve that grief.

Today, driving through Crestone on our way into town, a large black lab darts across the street between our truck and an oncoming car. Instantly I had flashbacks of the night the year before as both of us hit the brakes to avoid him. This time, the dog made it.. his owner appearing a few seconds later from around the corner waving at all of us as though we were old friends. Shane looked at me as my hand went for the window. I thought better of it and settled down.

We're travelers. Collectively we've got more than 150,000 road trip miles under our belts in twenty years time. We've swerved to avoid wayward dogs in Yellowstone. We've very carefully slowed and driven by multiple dogs running along the side of the road in eastern Kansas farmland. We've crawled down suburban streets as neighborhood dogs chased our wheels and jumped and yelped in front of us. We've screeched to a complete stop in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night near Kaibab, Arizona when the glint of an eye became the only savior of a jet black dog standing directly in our path.

Stray dogs are a fact of life, there's little we can do about them beyond neutering/spaying our own pets and hoping animal control will step in and get them off the streets (though that raises other tough questions). But far too many of the dogs we've seen on the streets were collared, and often tagged, and appeared to be otherwise healthy and well cared for. And that makes my blood boil.

Through the years I've found that there's a special breed of dog owner out there that feels the world is their dog's back yard, and that fencing and leashes are for squares and uptight neighbors that send their dogs to daycare. I get increasingly furious with these people with every wandering dog we come across -- and out here in southern Colorado there's no shortage -- wondering how much love you can really have for an animal if you gamble with its life, and potentially the lives of others, every time you open the door to let it out unsecured and unsupervised. We've had neighbors very casually say, as if re-telling cute baby stories, that their dogs sometimes don't come home for several days. No big deal, they say, they'll come home when they get hungry. "Always do."

We've got two very big and very bumbling and friendly dogs who, I have no doubt, harbor a natural fear of cars and would make a run for the first warm body they found if they were ever allowed to wander loose. But they're never going to. We keep them on long but secure tie-outs every time they're outdoors, and we've occasionally gotten criticized from neighbors who say we're 'stifling' them by not allowing them to run free out here.

Who are these people?

I suspect they're the ones who'll scream and shake their fists at the inevitable driver who one day comes around the corner and, with little warning, plows into the family golden retriever sunning himself in the middle of the road.


A neighborhood cat adopted us when we first moved in here, running straight into our garage as we unloaded the UHaul. She was starving, we assumed her for a stray. But we put signs out at the end of road anyway, and eight days later, we found out she belonged to the people across the street (who'd never knocked on any doors looking for her). They very casually came over and got her, and for the next week or so that cat made regular trips between our house and theirs. "What about the coyotes?" I asked one night, handing her back to them under their porch light. I got a nondescript shrug and a thank you. A few days later, their daughter asked my daughter if the cat had come by. We hadn't seen her. That was more than two weeks ago now, she's still missing.

Don't get me started on cats...

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