1989 Sunny on the Tracks

When he was about 3 years old, my son Benjamin had a Wolfhound named Sunny.  I had an adult named Shadow, and I had decided Benjamin needed his own puppy.  He loved Sunny, they went roaming around together.  We lived in a trailer house on my in-laws' land and there was plenty of space.  We had a fenced yard as well, where the dogs could stay.  But sometimes we liked to let them out and take them "out back" where the land dropped down to fields and then the Pease River.

Smith Hill

Not too far away from our trailer was the railroad track.  The trains went by pretty regularly.One day, I went outside and didn't see the three dogs, Sunny, Shadow, and our white German Shepherd, Critter.  Then I found a hole dug under the fence.  I started running up our towards the track and the street because that was I feared the most.  As I did, I saw Shadow and Critter come running towards me.  Critter kept going to the house, but Shadow was visibly upset.  I went with him up the embankment to where the train track was, and then I saw him, a pile of fur a little way down the track.  He didn't appear to be moving.

I ran all the way back to the house to get my car, which was a little Dodge Colt Premier Turbo.  I put Critter and Shadow in the yard and grabbed a couple of blankets.  Then I called our vet, Dr. Roger Lacy, and told them I was coming, and took off to the track.
When I got there, I left the back door of the car open.

Then I climbed up the embankment to where Sunny was lying.  He wasn't moving, but he seemed to be breathing.  He had a long singe mark all the way down his side from his shoulder to his flank.  I wasn't sure what to do, what if he had a broken back?  But I couldn't leave him lying on the track, knowing more trains would be coming.  I spread out one of the blankets and dragged him onto it.  He made some movements, so I know it must have hurt, but he didn't try to bite me.  After I got him on the blanket, I managed to get him down the embankment to the car.  He weighed about 80 lbs, I would imagine.  Somehow I got him onto the back seat, shut the door and took off to the vet.

Lacy Vet Clnic

When I got there, they took him in and told me to wait.  It was a long wait.  When Dr Lacy came out to get me, he told me Sunny was lucky that he was still alive.  He didn't appear to have any broken bones, but, he had a severe concussion and his responses were not good.  Roger thought he might have been hit a glancing blow on the head and landed between the 2 rails.  That would account for the singeing of his coat, from the heat of the metal wheels going by him.  It was close to a miracle that he actually only had the concussion.

Sunny stayed at the vet for about a week.  When he came home, he was subdued and lethargic.  I didn't think he would ever be back to normal.  But he remembered Benjamin, and Benjamin remembered him.  That was the important thing.  Shadow was extremely protective of him, but Critter never had liked him since he stole a snake from her as a puppy.

Sunny recovered to be almost completely his old self.  He retained the singe marks down his side for a couple of months, but otherwise, he was okay.  Dr. Lacy later told me "I wouldn't have given that dog a 30% chance of surviving, much less being back to normal".

I was just grateful I found him so quickly.  If he had been there when another train came by, we would not have been so fortunate.