To be honest, my first instinct was to keep driving. I’d always assumed bikers were trouble—the kind of men my mother warned me about. But something made me slow down.
That’s when I saw him. A towering man in a leather vest, kneeling in the ditch, lifting something small and fragile with the kind of care you’d use to hold glass. He wrapped it in a blue-and-white striped towel and cradled it against his chest like it was precious.
The tenderness in his movements stopped me cold. I pulled over without thinking. I had to know what could make a man like that cry.
He didn’t notice me at first. He was rocking gently, whispering words I couldn’t hear. As I got closer, I saw what he held: a German Shepherd puppy, maybe four months old, bloodied and filthy. One of her back legs was twisted unnaturally. Her breathing was shallow and fast.
