Yesterday I was driving home from work and watched as a smallish black lab mix darted across 7 lanes of traffic and in front of an oncoming truck. My heart stopped for a moment, but fortunately, he was really fast and made it safely across.

I changed course and caught up with him near the local Denny's where he'd stopped to relieve himself. He then proceeded to prance happily around the parking lot. I followed him for a bit with my car, calling out to him, but realized my best bet was to get out and see if he would come to me while I was on foot.

I walked a bit closer and called out to him in a sweet voice. His ears perked up and he looked over in interest. He then decided that, "Yes," I was worth coming over to check out. Fortunately he was wearing a harness which provided me with a pretty good handle to hold on without putting any strain on him. I started petting him, and he was very receptive to me.

I got him to jump into my car and off we went to the local animal shelter. They registered him and gave him a place to sleep, food etc and told me that they would keep him in the "found" department for 1 week and then evaluate him for adoption.

I was going to put up posters today and decided to call the shelter to see if he'd been reunited with his people before I put the posters out. I spoke to a woman who remembered my coming in with the small black lab in the harness, and she told me, "Yes! He was redeemed today!" I was so happy that the moment I got off the phone I broke down in tears! He is such a sweet little dog, and I'm so happy that he belongs to a good family that was actively searching for him and found him at the shelter the very next day! Also, this shelter requires that people pay a redemption fee of nearly $100 to pick up their found animals, so people have to really be committed to their pets to bring 'em home! So, yep! This is one lucky little guy who was rescued from traffic and reunited with a caring family!

Hooray!

:) :) :)