Fortunately, a driver noticed it and called the highway patrol -- again and again and again.

You know those people who treat their dogs like a member of the family? This story isn’t about those people. This is about someone who put his dog in a crate, attached the crate to the back of his Dodge Durango with a bungee cord (right behind the tailpipe), and then drove off into the sunset like a lunatic.

Or it could have been a woman who did this. A family. We don’t know. All we know is that an officer finally pulled this person over, thanks to the sustained efforts of Nicole Hubbard, an off-duty animal control officer who couldn’t sit back and watch a dog get treated this way.

It started on Saturday, according to a story in the New York Daily News, when Hubbard and her boyfriend were driving on Interstate 95 in Georgia and spotted the dog in the crate behind the SUV.

“We were riding back from a family vacation,” Hubbard said. “We thought, ‘Surely, they don’t have a dog in the back of it.’ But when we got up next to it, there the dog was.”

Yikes.

Hubbard called the highway patrol, who assured them an officer would be on the way. An officer was not on the way. Hubbard followed the SUV, worried about the dog, who seemed to be a white Beagle mix. She noted the cramped cage — the dog didn’t seem to have room to turn around. It was also hot — the day was 95 degrees. According to Pet360.com, Hubbard knew this would fall under neglect because the dog didn’t have water.

She called the highway patrol again, and an operator said the agency didn’t have an officer to send just yet. Undeterred, Hubbard stayed with the SUV until it crossed into South Carolina — about an hour and a half later.

Then, she called that state’s highway patrol, which quickly dispatched an officer, who pulled over the SUV and finally allowed Hubbard to stop her pursuit and carry on with her trip.

“They were wonderful,” said Hubbard.

It is not clear, however, what happened to the driver of the SUV, or the dog. Pet360.com called around to various agencies but couldn’t get an answer. Hopefully, at the very least, the dog was placed inside the car.

“I was just amazed that somebody could be that uneducated of the dangers with that dog being there,” Hubbard told the Daily News. “Hopefully, they learned something from it.”

Via the New York Daily News and Pet360.com