When Our Dog Was Hit by a Car

For years Joey, our Chocolate Labrador Retriever, would try any means imaginable to escape from our back yard.

running partners and good buds

He would nudge the gate lock with his nose until it released and then walk through the gate, the door open wide behind him.  One solution was keeping the wooden gate padlocked in a locked position all the time. This would work until our gardeners would come – and forget to relock the padlock, or would sort of close the padlock without the true “click” that signals it was locked. We would get the inevitable phone call: “Hello, do you have a dog? He’s up here at the school yard.“  Another solution we discovered in our new home was putting child-proof locks on our gates wherever possible. One time it was the dead of winter, there was 2 feet of snow on the ground in our New England abode.  We had Joey outside; surely he wasn’t going anywhere.   Until the phone call we received 30 minutes later:  “Hello, do you have a dog?  I’m here in the park…“  Joey had found one place in the chain link fence that was not affixed on top; he had born all his weight on the chain link and ridden the siding until it was horizontal with the ground, and then walked out, leaving only some footprints in the snow. Then there was the usual digging, and my innumerable attempts to discover and to patch up and reinforce any areas where Joey had showed an interested in digging his way out or that seemed vulnerable.  Still the phone calls: “Hello, do you have a dog? I live near the golf course and I have your dog in our home….“  On some days the phone call never even came: The police or Animal Control would just show up at our front door and the guilty party would walk out, head to the ground, eyes looking up like full moons.  Each time we thought Joey had luck on his side and each time we did the compulsory  property inspection. And each time we were thankful that Joey was such a friendly dog and people in our neighborhood were so caring and dog-friendly and could get close to him to get our home phone number off of his dog tag and even bring him in their home until I arrived.

Then there was the early Spring morning when Dad was out of town on business so the two couldn’t go running together.

When I woke up in the morning, I slipped Joey out the back door so he could take a pee until I could walk him.  One half hour later, I looked out the back yard to Joey’s usual spot under the apple tree – and no Joey!  I scoured the back yard with my eyes – no Joey! Then I looked down and there – on the wrong side of the fence – sat our beautiful chocolate Lab, quietly.  Just sitting.  Joey is on the wrong side of the fence, I thought to myself. This couldn’t be good.  A closer look revealed a bloody and injured dog – who trusted me to get him help.

It wasn’t until the veterinarian showed me proof that our dog had been hit by a car that I actually believed it.

Until the astute veterinarian showed me where the car had run over and broken three of his toes, I thought maybe a wild animal had attacked him, since there are woods all about our home and we’ve seen and heard deer, coyotes, fisher cats, wild turkeys and all sorts of animals on our street.  It was daytime though, and not entirely probable.  Joey, to be sure, didn’t recount or offer any  hints as to how he had been hurt – or even if he was hurting or feeling pain inside.

Of course my husband and I had a lot of questions and no answers:  What direction did Joey go in when he tunneled out? Had he actually run into the street?  What street had he been on when he got hit?  But it wasn’t until the ensuing weeks that my husband and I actually learned what had happened that Spring morning because the only thing that mattered in the beginning was that Joey get the medical care he needed.  When Joey was home from the hospital and we were taking him out for his twice-daily walks, we were finally able to piece together from neighborhood gossip the answers to our questions.

It turns out that the people who had witnessed the accident were terribly concerned and upset.

None of them knew if our dog had lived or died.  We phoned our good friends at Animal Control and reported that Joey was going to be okay and to please contact the woman whose car had hit Joey and let her also know that Joey had come home and was going to be okay. We were glad to be able to assure one witness that Joey was going to be okay because until she knew that he was alright, she said she couldn’t sleep at night, such had been Joey’s haunting cry when he was hit.

The ensuing months provided me the time to read and learn a lot about dogs.

I read the book How Dogs Think: Understanding the Canine Mind, by Dr. Stanley Coren, in which Dr. Coren said that dogs, being pack animals, would need to hide any signs of weakness or pain from the pack, as doing otherwise would put them at peril and at risk of being abandoned by the pack. Of course Joey would come home and sit quietly, never whimpering, always stoic, his tail wagging in gratitude and friendship.

All I knew from that first day was that Joey, while having encountered the statistical probability of being finally hit by a car, was still lucky and blessed in that he was alive and – we prayed – he would be okay.

That day marked an intense relationship with Joey – a reciprocal relationship in which our dog is not only our friend but we are his, the expression “dog is man’s best friend” flips over and man is dog’s best friend. We have to be: That is our responsibility and that is the meaning of love.

The first day I visited Joey as an in-patient in his pen in the animal hospital, I wanted to cry but didn’t. I guess I didn’t want him to hear the weakness in my voice the same way he didn’t want us to know he was hurting.  And I never did cry. It wasn’t about me: It was about Joey. Crying wouldn’t strengthen him and Joey was not the weak self-pitying type of dog (if indeed there even is a self-pitying type of dog).   In the CCU, I crawled right into his pen, right there…crawling through the IV tubes and vital sign-monitoring lines by his side.  It was really hard but I wanted to be right close with him and at his level and let him know we were still his buds.

It struck me when one of his doctors called Joey “my patient” that he was taking the same love and care with our dog as a human doctor would take with a human being. Maybe even more, in some cases. But it was so reassuring for my husband and me to know this and we could relax with the knowledge that Joey’s doctors truly felt responsibility for him and were critically professional.

I honestly do not see myself as Joey’s “mom”.  I see myself as his friend, his guardian, his owner, as a person he entrusts his life to.  I don’t see him as my “son” but as my dog, as our companion. How can I see him as our son?  After all, Joey is 10 years old and in dog years that means he is over 60, which means that he is older than either my husband or me. I hear my husband talking to Joey and saying “I hope we run again soon” ; I hear that relationship that exists between only the two of them, early each morning, sometimes before daybreak, when only the crazy joggers and their dogs, the bunnies and the birdies are out.

Though it was always in the back of our minds, we never actually expected our dog would be run over by a car.  No dog owner does.  We don’t anticipate the medical emergencies we may have when we are buying that cute puppy dog to be a companion to ourselves or to our children or throwing the ball into the lake and watching our dog jump in and  fetch.  But we are also taking on a huge responsibility when we adopt a dog or become their owners or parents.  And when the dog is ill or injured, everybody in our family has to change his routine a little. Vacations may have to be put on hold. The animal care is an unanticipated expense. We have to purchase dog gates and rearrange furniture. The family reconfigures, in many ways around the dog and his or her needs.

In the future, we still have to take  account of the fact that Joey is a dog and that he has a keen sense of smell and loves people and attention and running and being free and other dogs and that he he loves to dig his way out and that he will probably not learn his lesson because all of the above is his nature. We will have to deal with that and make some decisions.

In the meanwhile, Joey continues to improve and write his blog! Our dog shows us a dog’s perspective on this side of life. As one of his doctors said, “He’s trying to tell us something” and Joey’s blog teaches us how to listen to hear what it is he is trying to say when he’s injured and when he’s healthy.

I’ve spoken to so many children and adults – and when it comes to understanding dogs, children really are the voice of adults: When one little girl asked, “Didn’t he look both ways?” I had a feeling that she was not only asking for herself but for adults who just don’t understand that dogs are dogs and humans are humans and what that distinction invariably means.

So here’s a blog for children and for adults.  The pictures of this strong, loving, caring, friendly, beautiful, resolute and fighting dog will pick us up and bring a smile to your face.

Enjoy reading my dog’s blog and please comment!