Dog on road scared, not neglected, owner insists

Animal jumped from car after glove box opened, man says

A three-year-old sheltie who got loose on Highway 417 last week was frantic after CDs fell out of the glove box but was not neglected, says the dog’s owner.

Jacob Morris, Jax the dog’s primary caretaker, was driving from Ottawa to his parents’ house in the country for Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, Oct. 13 when the latch on his car’s glove box broke. CDs spilled onto the passenger’s seat where Jax, who already fears cars, was lying.

“He really just doesn’t like the car at all; he’s always fidgety in there. (The glove box) popped open and the CDs fell out on him, and he just kind of freaked out. He jumped on my lap and I was trying to get him off me and he jumped over my arms and out the window,” said Morris.

Morris said he immediately slammed on his brakes, jumped out of his car and began chasing Jax down the highway, near St. Laurent Boulevard. After more than a kilometre, Morris caught up with his dog, who was rescued by a driver further up the road, Corson Moir.

“I didn’t see him pick up the dog. When I got there, he had him in his car already. I got in and they drove me back to my car,” said Morris.

In an interview with the Citizen after the incident, Moir said the dog was “in bad shape” and “just wasn’t taken care of.”

Police escorted Moir and Morris to an Esso gas station on Innes Road after the incident. Jax stayed with Moir until they reached the gas station, said Morris, because Moir wouldn’t let him near his dog.

”He was on the phone with the police, calling them to come. He kept saying, ‘Just wait until the police get here.’ I just wanted to see him to make sure he was OK.”

Morris said an Ottawa Humane Society worker checked Jax over before returning the dog to Morris’s father, Steven, who had joined his son at the gas station. Steven said the dog was only returned to him and not Morris because the ownership is in his name.

The Humane Society worker said the dog looked fine, Steven said, but suggested he take Jax to a veterinarian, just in case. At the Ottawa-Carleton Veterinary Emergency Hospital on Lola Street, veterinarians found road rashlike abrasions over Jax’s left eye and on his rear right paw. Other than that, Steven said, the dog was fine; veterinarians released Jax right away.

Jax and Morris are nearconstant companions, said Steven, who insists the dog is well loved.

“If the dog was neglected, why would the Humane Society give it to us, and why would the vet give it a clean bill of health?”

What the police officers on scene were really concerned about, Steven said, was Morris running down the middle of the highway after the dog.

“When he jumped out, cars were flying by. The (Ontario Provincial Police) officer was right on the side of the road inside the construction and he told me himself that Jacob scared the hell out of him because he thought (Jacob) was going to get killed when he jumped out of his car because all the cars piled up and almost ran Jacob over. Jacob just kept running like he didn’t care.”

Morris said he was the last to leave the gas station after going over the incident with the Humane Society worker and police. Moir, he said, left first.

Jax is, “amazingly, thankfully” doing fine, said Morris, who is grateful to Moir for grabbing his dog.

“He was definitely scared, for sure. I’m glad that the guy picked him up, for sure. I must have thanked him a dozen times on the way back to the car.”