Dog rides bus alone to go to dog park

POSTED 8:50 AM, JANUARY 13, 2015, BY FOX 4 NEWSROOM

http://fox4kc.com/2015/01/13/dog-rides-bus-alone-to-go-to-dog-park/

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In the Seattle area, this is not uncommon scene.

According to the Christian Science Monitor,Eclipse, a 2-year-old labrador retriever bullmastiff mix regularly rides a city bus from her home to a nearby dog park. Eclipse rides the bus all by herself, and often hops onto a seat next to other passengers.

"It doesn't really appear to have an owner," the Monitor quoted local radio host Miles Montgomery as saying. "The dog gets off at the dog park. I just look out the window and I'm like, 'did that just happen?'"

It's not as if she doesn't have an owner. In fact, often she waits at the bus stop with her owner, Jeff Young. Sometimes, Young explains, he hasn't finished smoking a cigarette when the bus arrives, and since the two go to the dog park so often, the dog boards the bus and rides to the park by herself, much to the joy of many other riders.

"She's been here the last two years, so she's been urbanized, totally. She's a bus-riding, sidewalk-walking dog," Young says. "Probably once a week I get a phone call. 'Hi. I have your dog Eclipse here on 3rd and Bell. I have to tell them, 'No. She's fine.' She knows what she's doing."

Young told ABC News he always follows closely behind Eclipse on a later bus for the handful of stops to the dog park and then goes home with her. He said Eclipse loves interacting with other passengers.

Some bus riders have gotten quite used to her, according to KOMO-TV, Channel 4 in Seattle.

"All the bus drivers know her. She sits here just like a person does," said commuter Tiona Rainwater, as she rode the bus through downtown Monday. "She makes everybody happy. How could you not love this thing?"

A spokesman for Seattle's version of the PVTA, Metro Transit, says the agency loves the fact that the dog is using the bus.

"She would be much safer in the world if she had her owner on a leash," he said, jokingly.

So when Young and Eclipse get separated, it's not a concern.

"We get separated. She gets on the bus without me, and I catch up with her at the dog park," Young told the TV station. "It's not hard to get on. She gets on in front of her house and she gets off at the dog park, three or four stops later."

Seattle isn't alone in having a streetwise dog, according to the Huffington Post. Stray dogs in Moscow, Russia, have learned to commute in and out of the city from the suburbs by riding the subway, even watching out for other dogs to make sure they exit at the correct stop.