I Just Hit A Dog

On the way home from work on a skinny dark Lexington road called Hancock near Edgemont (better suited to revolutionary war horses and buggies it's so narrow), a dog ran right in front of my car and I tried ot miss him, but I hit him with a big terrible THUNK noise. The road was packed, I couldn't find a place to pull over safely or easily, so pulled into the next driveway, ran back to see what happened to the dog. I don't have a dog and for some reason in my head I was thinking, "What you do when you hit a dog?" and then I was hearing in my head, "People love their dogs. People really love their dogs." Running back in piles of icy snow wasn't easy and it was so dark, I couldn't see the dog anywhere -- I figured he was lying in the middle of the road dead -- not safe for the other cars either.

And then I see him and I'm dreading even looking -- but what I see is him semi-trotting and swerving around cars and making them hit the brakes -- which is even more dangerous -- and then I whistle for him and he comes over and looks at me with a quizzical look and I check him over and he doesn't seem to be very hurt at all. This is sure confusing. Another local neighbor lady pulls and says, "he lives over there." And I hear myself say, "he got hit" and then realize no, that sounds like someone else did it. And so I say, "I mean, I hit him," which makes me feel sick to my stomach. We call the police and by then, he's run off to the other side of the road and she follows him as I wait for the police. They are pleasant and send a car asap and now the dog has disappeared of course, but the car lady comes back and tells ran home on his own, so he can't be too hurt. I give the police my name and number. Then realize I have 3 minutes to get my son at daycare without being late, so take off and hope the dog and his owner are okay.