Random Musings

That Little Dog

This has been on my mind, so I guess I'm supposed to write it down while I'm sitting around thinking I don't have anything to write. I've been going over and over it in my mind, and seeing the image as clearly now as I saw it that morning.

I was on my way to work a few days ago, riding up Shiloh which is one lane in both directions, with the occasional widening to allow for a turn lane at traffic light intersections. On workdays, I leave way early because, first of all, I hate being in traffic. Especially since I have to take that one lane road where you might get behind a school bus which stops every fifty feet to pick up passengers, or a minivan with a soccer ball sticker on the hatch or some sort of baby-on-board-like stickers or other such parephenalia which requires it to carefully cruise five to ten miles under the already too low speed limit of 35 mph.

Secondly, I like to get to work a good while before I have to be there because I need the time to chill out. I'll have a cup of coffee and maybe a sausage biscuit, I read the news online, answer a few emails, and basically get my day arranged. Then I sit down and journal until it's showtime.

On this particular morning, I'd managed to get out of the door about ten minutes before my usual early time, so I wasn't in any hurry. I was riding along, listening to my music, thinking about the upcoming day, and just on the other side of Baker Road, in the turn lane, lie the body of a small dog. It looked to have been a minature Pinscher or maybe a Doberman puppy that had just lie down to take a nap in that spot. But of course, that wasn't the case.

Down here in Georgia, where developers are building so fast that it seems one day there's a forest and the next there's a subdivision called Forest Glenn in the spot, road kill is common. The animals that once called the woods home, are being displaced, and some end up under the wheels of the increased traffic that comes with the building up of an area.

It's nothing here to come across some nondescript, bloody mass of fur in the roadway which you assume used to be an opossum, a squirrel, or maybe a racoon. You can't go ten miles without coming across at least one animal carcass lying by the curb or on the shoulder. But it's rare that the animal is a dog.

That one appeared to have been dead for some time. The body had that sort of blurred, no-longer-living, much too still look to it that said whatever happened wasn't a recent event. Yet, the body hadn't been run over again even though it was barely daylight. As I looked in the rear view mirror, I noticed cars and trucks slowing and almost reverently going around it.

And I felt a little sad about the little dog being dead. It made me wonder why I didn't care as much about the other dead animals I had seen in the road. Why hadn't I been as grossed out about the dead dog as I have been about the oppossums, the squirrels, or the racoons that met their fate in that way? How come the other cars where going to great pains to go around it, almost moving into the next lane to miss it? Why does that picture stay in my mind?

Because dogs are special. They become a part of us. Even when they aren't yours, if you like or love dogs, you can empathize with its owners loss. I could see the kids looking for it after finding it gone from the house or the yard. I can hear its master calling for it, not knowing that it would never again answer the call. I could imagine the shock if a member of its adoptive family happened upon the corpse.

Then I remembered looking for Butch all day, everywhere, and that evening spotting his lifeless body in the distance on Oakman Boulevard. He was dead, had been dead awhile, and it was dark, but nobody had run him over again either.