“I thought she would move!” That was all the man could get out. His voice constricted by a mix of frustration and horror.

“I thought he would stop!” his dog’s eyes seemed to say as I began my triage evaluation.

“She has always moved out of the way in the past!” He continued, trying to explain how he accidentally backed over her in the driveway.

“He has always made sure I got out of the way in the past!” I imagined the canine logic, trying to process the situation.

My team and I gently lifted the geriatric shepherd onto a gurney, noting her back right leg dangling like a broken wing.

His wife seemed to be worried about what we would think and took over telling us what happened, “We were running late, and as we got in the car, we saw her lying behind us. We thought surely she would move, but as we backed up, we felt the car go over a large ‘bump’ and heard her scream.” At that moment, her voice broke, and she couldn’t continue. I nodded my head because this was a story I knew too well.

The old girl had managed to get up and made it to her dog bed. She had always been a tough ranch dog! They guessed she was OK because she moved; she deliberately made it to her bed. But when they got home many hours later, and not only did she fail to greet them, but she was still lying on her bed, they recognized something was really wrong. At that point, they picked her up, bed and all, and brought her to the emergency department.

The man and his family followed us inside as we began the process of treating trauma: vital signs were........

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