Friday, July 16, 2010

Thankful for a Good Samaritan

This morning on my 6 am morning walk (can I call it regular if I have been doing it for 2 weeks?), I encountered two amazing things. One was while I was on the White Rock bike trail near Greenville and Royal. I was walking along listening to NPR on my radio walkman thing and all of a sudden there was a huge, gorgeous, black horse walking the opposite way. I told the man atop the horse, "That's a horse!" To which he replied, "Yes, it is." I then said (remember it was about 6:30 am so my brain was not yet too active), "It's huge!" I was busy thinking about the horse and how wonderful it was to see such a beautiful horse in Dallas, what would I tweet when I got home I wondered?

I had now completed my stretch on the bike trail and was on Fair Oaks heading to Abrams when I encountered something scary on my walk. As I approached I could see that there was a black dog in the street and the cars were slowing down. I thought how nice it was that the cars were slowing down so that they would not hurt the dog. As I got closer to the dog I noticed that it didn't have a collar and that it didn't look so happy. Its face looked very dirty and it started to growl at me. I was across the street of a 4 lane road but just when there was a break from the cars the dog started to run at me. I started to scream and looked at my precious water bottle, it would not do much damage since I had drunk most of it. I thought about running to a house that was right behind me and ringing doorbells. I tried to slowly keep walking while still maintaining eye contact but the dog would just growl and try to run at me. I was really scared. I had decided when the next car came I was going to wave it down and jump inside to get away. Just then my Good Samaritan appeared. That story has been on my mind since Pastor Derrick preached on that passage on Sunday at Oak Lawn UMC (Luke 10:25-37).

My Good Samaritan was in a pick-up truck and I waved him down pointing at the dog. I was screaming and jumping up and down. The man got out of his truck and pulled a rake out of the back. I started to walk towards Abrams while looking behind me to keep looking at the dog. I then broke out into a run (while trying to look behind me) because the dog was holding his own against the man. It was super scary and I am wondering where I get some mace! But doesn't a dog have to be pretty close to you before you use the mace?

I had been thinking about tweeting about how thankful I was to see the horse, but now I am thankful more for my Good Samaritan. When his truck pulled alongside me at the light at Abrams I told him how thankful I was.

I am getting ready for the 3 day in November so my morning walks will continue, but it will be a while before I take that same route.

2 comments:

Vivie Bear said...

yikes! that is sooo scary! that happened to me once when vivian was a baby. we were walking with the stroller and I had our dog Django. A dog just ran up to us and attacked Django. I was horrified and screaming and thank goodness someone came to our rescue. SAME FOR YOU!!

Kerry Sumpter Smith said...

Patti, that is super scary! So glad that it worked out okay, but just makes you realize how important it is to take care of dogs.