On the Road of Life...

...there are buses and there are Dachshunds.

This morning when I was walking my dog, Buster, I saw a little black Dachshund with ID tags and a collar running loose in the park. I called him to me but he wouldn't come. He drifted towards the twelve-lane highway that we live by and a woman in a silver Civic stopped and tried to coax him into her car unsuccessfully. In fact, he was frightened and bolted straight into oncoming traffic and got clipped by a bus.

My neighbor two doors north has a Dachshund. Heartbroken and frantic, I went into the house to get some treats to track the little guy down. Maybe I could run him to the vet and keep him alive. I couldn't find him and on my way back I saw my neighbor on his front steps with, you guessed it, his dog.

Relieved, I told him the story and asked him to help me find the other dog. We never did. He was probably laying in the tall grass of the median taking his final doggie breaths.

We were both sad, but I walked back home very satisfied. Isn't this what it means to be a neighbor?