Matt Heath: The Day The Dog Hit A Car And Became Super Colin

Pup no worse for wear but everyone else a basket case.

Over the weekend a nice lady in a small white car ran over my dog Colin. It was horrible for the little guy but he wasn't the only victim.

Colin was happily chasing some local chickens round a Mangawhai field. My partner told him to stop. So he sprinted on to the road and THWACK, got hit by a car. Yelp yelp yelp. I'll never forget that noise. The impact was so loud. Metal on flesh. Cries of pain, confusion and betrayal. Poor wee Colin fled the scene down the road round the corner and into a mate's bach.

It was very upsetting for the family. In fact, seeing him get hit probably hurt me as much as it hurt Colin himself.

We grabbed his shell-shocked, shivering body, shoved him in a car and speed off to the vet. But the vet wasn't there! It was bloody after their hours. In a panic I Googled "what do you do if your dog has been hit by a car"; the answer was "take it to the vet". Arghhhhh. We had no choice but to pretend to be vets ourselves.

So we set about feeling for breaks, applying pressure to cuts and calming him with pats.

More Googling told us that dogs behave pretty much the same if they are majorly injured or not majorly injured. Some kind of evolutionary "don't let your enemies see you're hurt" thing. Colin seemed okay but was he bleeding to death on the inside? Very hard for a family of four to determine on the front steps of a closed clinic.

Suddenly the vet turned up. Out of pure luck she had forgotten something and returned to work to get it. What a vet she was, too. Very nice. Very efficient. Very gentle. A major examination, some injections and drugs and Colin was going to be okay. Which was great news for us but what about the poor people who hit him? They are thinking they killed a nice family dog. That's why I'm writing this article. For the nice lady in the little white car that ran over and nearly killed our dog.

In all the confusion and yelping I remember her yelling "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" in the background.

But we were too busy to let her off the hook. To tell her that she did nothing wrong. Colin is the criminal here. He shouldn't have been chasing the neighbour's chickens and he shouldn't have run out on to the road.

So, on the off-chance you are reading this, nice lady in a white car in Mangawhai last weekend, good news! Colin is fine. A bit sore and a bit stinky. But he'll survive, and he was always stinky.

Sorry our dog hit your car, hope there wasn't any damage. Hope your weekend went better post-accident. In many ways, nice lady in the white car, you are the victim here. You were just minding your own business when your life got interrupted by our dog bouncing off your bumper.

I hope you know that Colin was being a dick, not you.

But what a dick. Our tiny little miniature schnauzer-Jack Russell cross got hit by a massive hunk of metal at high speed and survived. He hit the ground hard but jumped up fast and ran off down the road like a champion.

My two sons have newfound respect for him. Maybe Colin is some kind of super dog. Maybe he's the dog of steel. Maybe he's invincible. Maybe this was his superhero discovery moment. Like when Bruce Willis survived that train crash in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable. That's when he discovered he was, in fact, unbreakable. Impervious to everything but water.

Either way, the boys have started calling Colin "the Dragon" and "the mighty warrior of the road".

One that may never be let off his leash again.

NZ Herald