A spooked dog ran nearly a mile through busy traffic to get help at her doggy daycare after she and her owner got into a car crash outside of Detroit, Mich.
Aries, a 3-year-old pitbull and Lab mix, was captured on surveillance footage running to the front door of Hounds Town Metro Detroit and pushing up on her hind legs to peer inside after her owner’s collision Feb. 24, WXYZ said.
“She’d run straight to her safe spot and was trying to attract their attention,” Aries’ owner, Melissa Fickel, 31, told the Washington Post of her beloved pooch.
Fickel told the outlet she had been driving to a park with Aries in Clawson when her car was struck from behind as a stoplight turned green.
Nobody was injured in the crash, and there was only minor damage to the vehicles, but the impact seemed to have scared the dog, she said.
“I had the windows down because Aries likes to hang her head out,” Fickel told WXYZ. “As soon as there was that smack, as soon as I felt and heard it, almost instantaneously, she was out the window.”
Fickel told the Washington Post she was relieved to see her dog sitting on the side of the busy street but then “as soon as she saw me, she turned and took off.
“I was in the middle of the road, I couldn’t run after her,” the owner said.
Fickel said she tried to call out for her dog but that Aries kept running and was soon out of sight.
The pet owner said she then pulled her car over to look around some buildings near where she last spotted her dog, but soon the police arrived to take statements about the fender-bender and she had to suspend her search.
“I couldn’t find [Aries], and I had to deal with talking to police and my insurance company, so I decided to take it one step at a time,” Fickel told the Washington Post.
The pet owner said she told officers that her dog had run off in the collision, prompting a cop to phone in a description of Aries to Dispatch so that other officers could also look for her.
Finally, about 20 minutes later, Fickel received a call and a text from Travis Ogden, the owner of Hounds Town Metro, which Aries visits once a week.
“[Travis] called me and said, ‘She’s here,’ and I literally sank to the ground,” Fickel told WXYZ.
“So many things could have gone wrong because she had to cross a busy four-lane road to get to the doggy day care,” she added to the Washington Post.
“I was really thankful to learn she was safe in a place she loves.”
Aries had shown up to the doggy daycare during the staff’s noon break, when employees normally shut down the lobby and catch up with cleaning and other tasks, General Manager Dominic Pace told USA Today.
He said he went to the front of the business to check phone messages and e-mails and was in the lobby with another employee when they saw something outside.
“We noticed something dart past the front door,” Pace said. “It was like a black blur that just went past.”
Thinking it might have been a dog, Pace walked outside and found Aries standing by the sidewalk leading to the front door, panting and “a little freaked out,” he said.
He then called over to Ogden, who told the Washington Post he “knew immediately” it was Aries but was stunned to see her without Fickel.
Everything only made sense after Ogden called Fickel and found out about the crash.
“Dogs are really smart and know their routes,” he explained. “They’re constantly looking out the window.”
Pace also suggested Aries may have picked up on the building’s scent, as well as that of the other dogs in the building, and ran toward it knowing she would be safe inside.
She was likely spooked by the crash, Ogden noted.
“Aries heard a loud noise, and that was a big shake to her world,” he said. “She was running to get the heck out of there and get back to where her friends are, where she could find somebody to help.”
The staff provided the pooch with water and played with her until Fickel could come pick her up, the Washington Post said.
Fickel said she felt the stress and panic of the day only melt away as she sat and Aries sat together at home later.
“I petted her a lot and told her she was a good dog,” Fickel told the Washington Post. “And that night, she got a whole taco.”
