I almost sent a really large dog to its grave last night (no this post doesn’t have anything with my old domain). Coming home along Belvedere road at around 23h30 last night, I narrowly avoided turning a dog into a permanent hood ornament. This was not your average large dog, this was Great Dane sized; it was just big, which is probably the only reason I saw it in time, considering that I’m rather night blind. I guess I have my new glasses, and power steering, to thank for allowing me to avoid this “hazard�?.

To clarify somewhat: the dog was right in the middle of my driving line, which would be roughly the middle of the lane. For those who know Belvedere, they also know that it’s a really wide road, which in this case is really fortunate as I had plenty of space to do a nice little emergency avoidance maneuvre, which only placed me partly into the oncoming lane — I did check for oncoming cars, and I decided to go that way because there was another car behind me to my left.

Regarding the car behind me, he’s really lucky he wasn’t traveling directly behind me; he probably would have been way too close to avoid it in time given the speed of travel and time of reaction required.

I shudder to think what may have happened had I actually hit this dog. I’m pretty sure I’d be rebuilding the entire front end of my car if I had, not to mention the possibility of being rear-ended by the guy behind.

So on a final note, please look after your pets. Maybe I should have stopped to see if the dog had tags, unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind at the time, and I didn’t see any trace of it on my way to work today.