This story starts way back in the mid 1970s, but my reason for writing is right here in 2021.
A few nights ago, in the waning days of the year's first month, I watched on our office TV a film released in 2019, "A Dog's Way Home." Kind of a latter-day "The Incredible Journey," which I loved as a child. The stories are similar. Beloved but somehow lost domestic pets find their ways back to their people.
It's been many years since I've seen "Incredible Journey," so I don't recall many details. Just that the trio was comprised of a Siamese cat, a Staffordshire terrier and a Golden Retriever.
"A Dog's Way Home" follows a single dog, Bella, a pit bull mix, on her way home to her beloved Lucas, his girlfriend, Olivia and his mom. Her travels take her from New Mexico to Colorado over the course of two winters.
Bella makes friends with a pack, becomes a mother-dog to an orphaned cougar (Big Kitten) is hunted by wolves, adopted several times on her journey and finally, finally completes the game Lucas taught her: Go Home.
But not without a final road to cross. And it nearly proves fatal.
She is hit by a car.
Now this movie pushes all the right buttons for a tear-jerker, but it brought tears to my eyes because of where this story began in the '70s.
It was spring, I remember because I was wearing just a jean skirt and a light top.
I left my apartment by the Ohio State campus headed for a morning class (which one, I don't remember).
As I approached Lane Avenue, a dog on the opposite side started to cross, trotting right into traffic.
A car hit him, then ran over him.
Amazingly, the dog got up, trotted back to the side of the street it had started from and laid down under a young tree. It sat with its head up for a moment, then the head went down.
I was in a panic. I ran back to my apartment, a matter of moments, and phoned campus police.
I don't know what I thought they could do, and I can't recall what their response was, I think the dispatcher promised to send a car.
It didn't matter. The dog had died.
I wish, rather, that I had gone to the dog and comforted it. Stroked its head.
Where it came from or where it was going, I'll never know. But it was just a simple ordinary day for that dog that ended in what I can only imagine was great pain. And tears for me. Then and now.
It would be many years from then until I had dogs of my own and learned all they had to teach me.
I don't know if I can really think of that pup as my first dog. If it was, I failed it by not comforting it.
But if there is a rainbow bridge, little dog, I'm sure you made it to the other side.
Forgive me.
