Dog forced to ride in crate strapped to bumper of suv at 70mph

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File this one under the category, “What the bleep were they thinking?!”

Off-duty Animal Control officer, Nicole Hubbard and her boyfriend were traveling on Georgia’s I-95 on their way home from vacation when they spotted an SUV with a dog crate strapped to its bumper traveling at about 70mph.

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“We thought, ‘Surely, they don’t have a dog in the back of it,’” Hubbard told the NY Daily News. “But when we got up next to it, there the dog was.”

Not only was the dog, who appears to be a Beagle mix, strapped to the bumper of the Dodge Durango, only inches from the vehicle’s exhaust and not much farther from the road beneath him, he had no food or water, and the temperature outside was about 94-degrees.

Hubbard did what any self-respecting human being would do and called Georgia’s highway patrol who said they’d dispatch an officer immediately.

Meanwhile, the temperature outside continued to climb.

After some time had passed, Hubbard called police again to see that an officer was, in fact, coming to the dog’s aide, and was told that they simply had no one available to send.

So, Hubbard and her boyfriend trailed the SUV until they reached the South Carolina border about two hours later, then called that state’s highway patrol department who immediately sent an officer to the highway. The SC dispatcher kept Hubbard on the line until police arrived and pulled the SUV over. Only then did Hubbard feel it was safe to continue her journey home.

While it’s not clear whether the dog’s owner was issued a citation or simply ordered to unstrap the dog and keep him inside the vehicle where he belongs, with his family, some reprieve from the heat, and some fresh water to drink, the efforts made by Hubbard very well could have saved the little dog’s life.

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

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