The two women could not believe their eyes.
Driving back to Santa Rosa from the coast around 8 p.m. on Wednesday evening, they saw a dog trotting alongside a gray Ford Explorer on Bodega Avenue, on the western outskirts of Sebastopol.
They noted how odd that seemed, and expressed alarm that the dog, which appeared to be a German shepherd-Siberian husky mix, had somehow escaped from the car.
As it approached the traffic light at Bodega and Pleasant Hill Avenue, the Explorer pulled a U-turn, heading west again, then quickly turned left onto West Hills Circle.
One of the women, a former military police officer in the Army, immediately hooked a U-turn and followed the Explorer.
That’s when the women, whose names are being withheld because they fear retaliation, realized that the dog was attached to the car by a long leash, or rope.
Seconds after the former MP turned left on West Hills Circle, her friend began filming the SUV with her cellphone in the passenger seat.
The dog’s leash was attached to a choke collar, the friend recalled. The animal was “yelping and whining. It was the most horrible, cruel thing I’ve seen in my entire life.”
The video shows the Explorer turn left again, then accelerate to a speed the husky could not match. After falling onto its left side the dog is briefly dragged along the rain-slick pavement. With another left turn approaching, the driver was forced to brake. The dog regains its feet and continues to lope behind the car.
As the two women pull alongside the car, the video ends.
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After a profane exchange, during which the driver directed a slur at them and told them to “mind their own f—ing business,” they said, he put the husky in the car and drove away.
Working with a license number provided by the women, police tracked the vehicle to a residence in Cotati. According to an account given to the women by Sebastopol police — who worked with Cotati police to locate the Explorer — the man told authorities that he was unaware that the dog had gotten outside the car.
“We’ve looked into this thing, we’ve located the dog, we’ve located the people,” said Captain James Hickey of the Sebastopol police Saturday morning. “We’ve made sure the dog is healthy and safe, first and foremost.”
“Second of all, thank God for those women jumping in and getting involved, and getting them to stop. They saved the dog’s life, hands down.”
The Explorer driver told police “he did not know” the dog was behind the car, said Hickey, who allowed for the possibility that “accidents do happen.”
A report of the incident will be sent to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s office, to ensure “we’re covering all our bases, everything is done, and there’s not something we are missing.”
The DA’s office will then decide whether or not to press charges against the dog’s owner.
While Cotati police accompanied their Sebastopol colleagues to the driver’s residence Wednesday night, they are not otherwise involved in the investigation, “so we will not have a comment on it,” said an officer who answered the station’s phone Friday afternoon.
Because the incident took place within Sebastopol city limits, it fell outside the jurisdiction of his department, said Andy O’Brien, a humane officer with Sonoma County Animal Services.
Police have not released the name of the driver.
Police told the former military police officer that the dog did not appear to be harmed when they inspected it Wednesday night. They told her that they could not take the animal, because it was the man’s property.
But how thorough was that examination, the woman asked. “Did they take it to an emergency vet?”
Both women remain deeply concerned for the husky, while it is left in the care of the man driving the Explorer. They dismissed out of hand the possibility that he did not realize the dog was outside the vehicle.
Had that been the case, said the former MP, the driver’s reaction would have been more along the lines of “Oh my god, thank you so much for letting me know, you saved my dog’s life.”
Instead, she said, he was “freaking out from the beginning. He had such a hot temper, right off the bat.”
She recalls “laying on the horn, trying to get the neighbors to come out, trying to get this guy to stop.”
When he did stop, the women began shouting at the driver, who was defensive and hostile, they said.
“I said, ‘What the f— are you doing? You’re going to kill that dog — this is crazy!'” she recalled.
“F— you!” replied the man, who the woman estimated to be in his late 50s. “Mind your own f—ing business.”
“No dude,” replied the former MP, “You’re killing your dog!”
Desperate to remove the husky from danger, she offered to buy it from its owner. “I’ll give you all the money in my wallet,” she said.
The man refused. “This is my dog,” he said. “I can do what I want to it.”
The incident left both women extremely upset. “I couldn’t sleep all night,” said the ex-MP.
“I couldn’t make sense of how someone could do that. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
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