It was just a knee-jerk reaction. I was out for a walk at night on a full moon, heading toward Crystal Lake, not far from my house in Averill Park. I walked alone down a dark two-lane road, and all of the sudden the bushes shook and something from behind the bushes jumped out toward me.
I screamed, “I’m afraid of you!!”
I know it’s an odd reaction. If it were an attacker I just went belly up. But, to my relief it was a large white dog, as happy to be running solo under the full moon as I.
He walked alongside me for a few yards and then shot up a long stretch of lawn toward a house in the distance that had a nice view of the lake across the street. Moondog galloped toward me, ran into the road without slowing down, rubbed against my legs and took off again for the wide open lawns.
As he was running back to me I realized, right now I’m responsible for this dog. He might come running back toward me when there’s a car coming and it’s going to be my responsibility to make sure he doesn’t get hit.
Not a minute later, a small pick-up truck came up the road from behind me at the same time Moondog was bounding toward me from the far end of someone’s sprawling lawn. At the pace each was moving, unaware of each other, Moondog would be struck.
I stood partly in the road, faced the headlights of the oncoming truck and waved my arms wildly. Then held my palm out toward Moondog, and yelled, “Moondog! Stop! No! No! Stop!”
He didn’t. He couldn’t.
He was so full of carefree running-all-over-the-place happiness, he couldn’t hear beyond the blood rushing through his ears.
I had to stop the truck. I couldn’t control the dog.
I turned toward the headlights again and pumped both hands toward the pick-up as if I could slow it down with the energy in my palms. I needed the driver to stop, not swerve around me and broadside the dog.
Moondog continued racing toward me, unaware of the truck. The driver of the truck didn’t see him until the last second, in the light of the moon. She had slowed down but when she saw the dog she slammed on her breaks. Moondog ran in front of her bumper, in front of the blinding headlights.
There was a small thud at the same time the truck came to a stop, and Moondog made it all the way to me without a limp or a whimper. Only his tail was hit. Moondog realized. He sat next to me, panting.
Instead of taking off after she realized the dog was unharmed, the driver climbed out of the truck, leaving the door ajar. A woman with long braids and jeans ran toward Moondog. I was afraid at first she was going to ream me out.
She wanted to make sure the dog was okay. When she realized he was fine, she stood up and apologized for not seeing my dog and almost hitting him. I explained to her that he wasn’t mine.
“I just met him a few minutes ago.” I didn’t bother to explain that I’d just had a flash thought in my head that I would need to act quickly if a car were to come and then no sooner after that little movie played out in my head, she came along, and the movie began.
“I would have felt awful if I’d hit him,” she said.”I love dogs. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”
“I would have felt awful that I didn’t do enough. I usually freeze in these situations. This was the first time I didn’t freeze in an emergency.”
We hugged each other before she climbed back into her truck and drove away. Moondog stayed with me. We walked to the edge of the lake where I was heading, to stand at the end of the beam of light the moon cast across the lake and absorb it.
In hindsight, I regret not bringing Moondog home and keeping him even though he belonged to somebody else. I never saw him again after that.
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