Inertia and a little white dog

Down a busy street I am driving, hurrying to get to my barber for a long overdue lopping of my locks, with just a few minutes before he closes for the day.

To my left I catch a glimpse of a white ball bobbing beside the road. Perhaps a plastic bag caught in the fingers of the wind ... no, it's a Jack Russell terrier running loose.

I keep driving as the bailiff in my brain calls the courtroom of my soul to order.

The dog is not IN the road but sensibly proceeding beside it. Perhaps he lives close by and will soon be safely home. If I try to help, I will certainly miss getting my hair cut. If I try to help, I may only make the situation worse. I may only be able to watch helplessly as some fool runs him over right in front of me, like the time I tried to help a huge, grouchy snapping turtle across a highway only to have a damned UPS truck deliberately blast past me and crush the beast and nearly tip over his sorry brown truck -- wish it had tipped over but that incident and my hatred for UPS are another story.

The haircut be damned. I am not going to let inertia win this one, regardless of the consequences. I turn around.

The little white dog is now in the roadway, sniffing around. I flick on my hazard lights and slow down. Some exacrable moron behind me interprets that as a signal to cross the double yellow line and floor it past me. I can only hope that if his dog or child is ever in a roadway, people will have more sense than his sorry A$$.

The dog is scared by my car and climbs out of the roadway and begins to run alongside the guardrail. I keep going, looking for a safe place to park so that I can get out and try to communicate with him.

To be continued