There was nothing Utah Railway Company train operator Fred Krause could do when he spotted a small, cream-colored dog on the tracks. But somehow, miraculously, the dog was small enough that when he hunched low, the train passed over him without harming him.
The little dog wasn’t so lucky on the train’s return trip. When Krause saw the dog running down the tracks, Krause managed to slow the train to 15-20 mph. “I heard him hit the snowplow (on the front of the train),” Krause said in an article in the Standard-Examiner. He had to continue to his destination, but once he got there, the kindly Krause high-tailed it back to the scene of the injury in his own car.
“My heart went out to the little guy, and I had to go back and look. The last thing I expected was to find him alive,” he said. When he arrived, the elderly, dazed Shih Tzu was still lying on the tracks. Krause said it appeared no one had cared for the dog for some time.
“He looked like he had his bell rung pretty good. He was obviously in shock,” said Krause, who immediately took him to a veterinarian. The dog had suffered a concussion from the impact, and was harboring multiple infections because of his long-time exposure to the elements, according to the Standard-Examiner.
Krause and his wife, Lori, have taken him into their home while he mends. They hope to find him a loving home once he has recovered.
They are currently calling him “The Little Guy,” Lori Krause said. But she added that perhaps they should call him Lucky, or Bullet, “because he has dodged a few.”
