Peanut, a small blonde dog

A Dog Rescued & Returned to His Family
Lisa, ArkOnline

My husband and I were driving down Macadam Ave in Portland OR in September 1996. We were on our way from Lake Oswego to Portland one night at about 10 o'clock. We were almost to the edge of Lake Oswego when the traffic in front of us came to an abrupt stop. I was in the passenger seat, and all I could see was something in the middle of the street, which for some reason, I assumed was a cardboard box. As we started to pass by, the 'box' stood up and starting darting through the traffic.

Once I realized it was a dog who had been hit by a car, my husband stopped our car, I got out and started herding the dog off the road. Another car pulled off the road and called the Lake Oswego police to come and help rescue the pooch. I was finally able to get this very scared and frantic dog off the road, and to sit and stay in one place (wedged between the highway and a railroad track). The small, blonde 'American fence-jumper' was too afraid to let us come near him, so we just sat near him and tried to calm him down with our voices.

After about 30 minutes of sitting there alongside the busy road, a train approached, and seeing us sitting not more than six feet from the tracks, released the horn over and over and over again to warn us away.

VERY fortunately, the dog didn't budge. After another 30 minutes, with no sign of the police, I was able to get a nearby gas station to donate a bottle of water and a dog biscuit to our cause. We finally coaxed the dog into the back of our car and we took him home.

We found a name and phone number on his dog tag and phoned the owner. A woman answered the phone, we told her we found her dog, and she proceeded to ask us all sorts of seemingly irrelevant questions. She finally told us that the dog had been missing for two weeks and had traveled from deep in Southeast Portland (on the other side of the river!). Her husband had been up almost every night for the last two weeks searching and searching for the dog. Several prank phone callers had called with false leads, thinking it was a pretty funny joke to get the owner to jump in his car and drive several miles just to find his dog nowhere in sight. She was able to contact her husband and within 10 mins his car pulled up in front of our house.

'Peanut', as we later learned was the dog's name, was still sitting in the back of our car and his owner parked right behind us. As soon as he saw his dog, his head fell to his hands and he started crying uncontrollably. Peanut recognized the car and immediately began to wimper, yip, and jump up and down. They were obviously both VERY happy to see each other again after two weeks.

About a week later, we received a card in the mail from Peanut, complete with a picture and a really nice note, thanking us for saving him and reuniting him with his dad - Peanut's injuries from the car that hit him were very minor.

It still makes me really happy to think about that story.

Source: http://www.arkonline.com/lisa_rescue.html