"The more I see of man, the more I like dogs"

Hey, remember that time when I had to pull over because there was a dog running all over the road on my drive to work? Well whaddyaknow, it happened again!

I was driving home  from work on my scooter this week and as I arrived in Villefranche, the next town along from Nice, I suddenly had to do an emergency stop because there was a little dog running back and forwards on the road in front of me. 
At first I thought it was with some people who were a little bit higher up the road and they were waiting for him, but once he'd jumped back onto the pavement, and I drove off I started to have a bad feeling about the whole thing. I drove on through the town for about 1Km, but the idea that he might have been lost/abandoned had taken hold of me and no puppies are getting run over on my watch if I can help it, so I did a U- turn at the nearest traffic lights and went back to check.

Sure enough, when I went back he was still in the middle of the road with cars all round him, swerving to avoid hitting the poor little pup, but there was nowhere for me to pull over safely and park so I did another about turn, managed to park the scooter on the opposite pavement and  went to grab the dog from the middle of all the cars.
As I got close enough to catch him, he ran towards a gate set in the wall on the other side of the road and started barking his little puppy head off, so I rang the doorbell  but there was no reply. From the way he was barking I was pretty sure that it must be the right door so I left my finger on the bell for a good couple of minutes and eventually a man opened the gate and the dog ran inside like a bat out of hell.

I checked with the guy that it was in fact his dog (it was) and  he thanked me profusely for bringing him back, but as I turned to go he said to me "You know he likes to run off, he's pretty used to the road" which just about left me speechless.
From first hand experience, I can tell you this dog was not used to the road, because I wasn't the only one who'd had to do an emergency stop to avoid hitting him, and as the gate and house itself were set right on the main road, there is no way in hell a dog, any dog, loose on the road could be anything but dangerous. As the joke goes, properly trained, a man can be dog's best friend, and I just hope this particular dog's best friend wises up and keeps him inside the garden in the future, because frankly I don't think I can take any more canine near misses on my commute to and from work!