A service dog on a bus barked and rested its paws on the dashboard, trying to warn the driver about something: and then the driver saw it… 

A policeman in uniform was sitting on a public bus. Next to him, on the front seat, his faithful service dog, a smart husky, was calmly settling in. For passengers, this was already a familiar sight: the dog did not disturb anyone, quietly looked out the window, watched the flickering landscapes and seemed to enjoy the quiet road.

But suddenly, somewhere in the middle of the journey, everything changed.

The husky’s ears suddenly perked up. His gaze became tense, as if he had caught some barely perceptible, but alarming signal. At first, the dog whined quietly, then suddenly jumped up from his seat and rushed towards the bus driver.

The service dog pressed its paws against the dashboard, buried its nose in the windshield and began to bark loudly. The bark was muffled, piercing, with a growl, as if the dog demanded an immediate reaction. It scratched the dashboard with its paws, then looked straight at the road, then turned back to the driver, as if it wanted to say something.

The bus driver, a man of about forty-five, tried to ignore it at first. The bus was full of people – you can’t risk their lives. He held the steering wheel tightly, trying not to be distracted by the dog’s strange behavior. But the further it went, the more persistently the dog continued to bark, pressing its chest against the steering panel, growling and literally “pulling” the owner’s gaze to the road.

And then the driver himself noticed.

“Oh God!” he shouted and slammed on the brakes.

The bus stopped with a wild screech of tires. The passengers shook slightly, people screamed in surprise, but the driver did not even look back. All his attention was directed forward, because there was… 

A terrible picture unfolded before them: a huge accident. Several cars collided with each other, some rolled over, others were completely smashed.

Victims lay on the road and on the side of the road, some tried to get up, some groaned in pain. Smoke rose into the air, the smell of gasoline and burnt rubber spread.

The driver realized that in a few more seconds their bus would have been part of this tragedy. Hundreds of lives – passengers, children, elderly people – could have been cut short.

But it was the dog who first sensed the danger. And if not for its sharp ears, its instinct, its desperate barking – the bus could have crashed into one of the mangled cars.

The people inside the bus realized that they had just escaped disaster. The passengers’ gazes were directed at the husky, who was still standing cautiously near the windshield, not taking his eyes off the road.

The policeman, the dog’s owner, stroked the dog’s scruff and quietly said:

“Good job, boy. You saved our lives.”