Opinion: Saving a dog, L.A. freeway style

On the 5 Freeway on Tuesday, just north of Commerce, the northbound traffic was finally starting to pick up when the silver Mercedes came to a dead stop in front of me in the fast lane. And then the driver got out. Oh, great, I thought. What looniness have we got here?

The middle-aged man scurried forward along the median. By poking my head out the window, I could see that he was running after a little stray terrier-type dog. It got too far away and he returned to his car.

But then another car pulled over, just ahead of the dog, and a thirty-something woman got out. The Mercedes man pulled up closer to the dog. A third car pulled partway into the lane between them so the dog was surrounded. And together the three people approached the dog from several directions.

I pulled my Subaru up to provide a barrier between traffic and the silver car and then, amazingly enough, a small armada of cars stopped in a protective ring around the “first responders,� a signal to oncoming cars that something big was going on and they should slow down.

The terrified dog tried to bite its rescuers, but the first man who had stopped got hold of it, gently held its muzzle closed, and placed it in the back of his car. “I don’t know who owns it,� he yelled semi-helplessly, before getting into his car and joining the rest of the group driving away. The whole thing took perhaps a minute, maybe two.

Were we wrong to stop on the freeway like that for a dog? Could people have been harmed, instead of just the dog? It felt safe enough for those two minutes, traffic was pretty slow, but everyone was intent on the dog, not the oncoming cars. I don’t know, but it felt serendipitous, people in luxury cars, people in economy cars, acting on instinct to rescue the dog and protect one another.

But if you’re missing a little terrier-chihuahua looking dog, you might want to check the shelters in the area. And if you are reunited, know that the drivers of Los Angeles had your pup’s back. And get it a dog tag.

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