Traffic on a busy road in Los Angeles County slowed to a crawl earlier this week for a reason none of the drivers could see from behind. Suzette Hall and Rosario Ortiz, both of the rescue Logan's Legacy 29, could — they had been given the location of two dogs reported sitting in the roadway and were inching toward it.
What they found on the centreline were two dogs who had no business being a pair. One was a large shepherd mix. The other was a curly-haired dog Hall estimated at under five pounds. The big dog was lying with her body wrapped around the small one, watching cars pass on both sides, and she did not move.
Hall's account of the scene is blunt about the part that reflects worst on everyone present: drivers were swerving around the dogs rather than stopping. A vehicle slowing on a busy road is a hazard; a vehicle stopping and putting hazard lights on to shield an animal is how these calls end well, and it is what the rescuers did as soon as they had pulled over.
They blocked traffic on one side, coaxed both dogs off the road into a neighbour's yard, and set two baited metal traps with the intention of securing them individually. The plan ran into the dogs' bond almost immediately. The larger dog — later identified as Nova — stood over the smaller one, tracking every movement the rescuers made. When they lifted the small dog, Benji, into a crate, Nova would not leave it. She sat pressed against the bars until hunger eventually took her into the second trap.
Hall drove both to Camino Pet Hospital, and the story then resolved faster than these usually do. The dogs' owners arrived at the clinic while she was still there, having been searching frantically for them. Nova and Benji had escaped from a house miles away, and the state of them — filthy coats, worn pads — indicated they had covered the distance on foot. The reunion happened in the clinic, and Hall has described it as one of the better moments of her rescue career.
Both dogs are home and decompressing, and the family has put new containment measures in place. It is worth saying what almost happened instead: a five-pound dog on a centreline in Los Angeles County survives on luck, and the only reason he was not hit is that a much larger dog decided her job was to lie in the road next to him and be visible. Hall's framing of it is hard to argue with — the shepherd was the reason the small one lived.
If you come across this situation, the sequence that works is the one the rescuers used: put your hazards on and use your vehicle to shield the animals rather than driving around them, call animal control or a local rescue with a precise location, and do not chase. A frightened dog pushed off a centreline goes into traffic, not away from it.
