Man's Best Friend

"It was just another Sunday, and my roommate and I walked to the local McDonalds to get some cheap chicken nuggets for dinner since we hadn't eaten all day. We waited in line for a little while, ordered, and stood off to the side to wait.

The way the registers were set up, being off to the side, my roommate and I could clearly see the drive-thru window, but we weren't paying any attention until we heard the employee yell something along the lines of "What are you doing to your dog?!" Obviously, this catches our attention and we look out past her. The vehicle in the drive-thru was a newer SUV, and in the driver side window, a small dog was being choked by the window being rolled up on his neck. The dog was no more than a few months old. Probably a Grey Hound puppy. The driver started yelling, saying her window is malfunctioning, and in a matter of 30 seconds this poor dog is being choked by this window so intensely that his mouth is being forced to stay wide open. The manager and window employee are both trying to break the car window with a shoe when I decided I had seen enough.

There were at least 10 other people watching and no one was doing anything. The manager was an older lady, and the other employee/driver were younger women, and they just weren't strong enough to break the window. I couldn't just watch anymore. I sprinted out to the drive thru and my roommate followed. At this point, the manager was outside trying to break the window with a metal bar she found inside the store. In the panic and confusion, the manager OPENED the car door to keep the driver safe from shattering glass but no one was supporting this poor dog, who was literally hanging by his neck with nothing to stand on. So I grabbed the metal pipe from her and smashed the car window as fast as I could. My roommate caught the unconscious dog, who's tongue was lifelessly hanging out the side of its mouth. We took the dog to the grass next to the car and the manager started to try and do CPR on it. He started to breathe but it was very labored and sporadic, and it never opened its eyes.

After about 10 minutes we brought the dog to the woman's car so she could take him to the emergency vet. When she opened the door, there was another greyhound puppy, obviously his sibling, sitting in the car waiting. We laid the puppy down and the sister immediately started to nudge him with her nose and eventually just laid next to him. The difference in the way they looked was disturbing and very obvious, the boy just didn't have anything left in him, it was like he was a stuffed animal.

Even though he was breathing when they left, I was pretty sure he wasn't going to make it. The manager and employee were both crying when we walked back inside. They gave us hugs and said thank you, but I didn't feel like we had done anything to make a difference. All of this happened in about 15 minutes, but it felt like we were there for hours. I called the emergency vet about an hour later. At first, they didn't want to tell me what happened, but once I explained that I was the person who tried to save him, she told me. He had passed away long before they even arrived at the vet, his trachea had been crushed.

I remember the look on that dog's face, as the window choked him harder and harder, the helplessness is his eyes, and the sister who understood what was wrong were some of the most disturbing and sad things I've ever seen in my life. The image of that poor puppy will stick with me forever. He wasn't a person, but it was still beyond messed up."