I was driving home from work, just another long stretch down Highway 52, when I noticed a motorcycle parked awkwardly on the shoulder. Normally, I wouldn’t have stopped, but something about the way the man was kneeling beside the road made me slow down.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a worn leather vest, tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves. At first glance, he looked intimidating—the kind of man you’d cross the street to avoid. But when I got closer, I saw his hands shaking as he cradled something wrapped in a blue towel.
Inside was a small German Shepherd puppy, no bigger than a loaf of bread. She was hurt and whimpering softly, and the man’s eyes were filled with tears.
“Someone hit her,” he said quietly. “They just kept going. She crawled off the road. I couldn’t leave her.”
That image stopped me cold—a tough-looking man brought to his knees by a fragile, frightened life. He told me he’d called a vet twenty minutes away, but looking at the puppy, I knew she didn’t have that long.
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