greenie - I appreciate your honesty and I do understand the way you feel about animals. I've never hit a dog, but I was in a car that hit a wild baby pig that ran out of the forest. Like ku'u said, it's easy to talk about those things now but at the time, we stopped, grabbed the pig, and went to every house trying to find out if that was someone's pet that got out of its cage. When no one claimed it, we buried it. I know by reading some of my remarks, you might think I feel nothing for animals but I do. I may not be as passionate as other people are about animals, but I've had pets. And I've cried when each of them died.
My point about the dog was that if I'm driving along, and a dog runs in the road, before I endanger the lives of other people on the road or the people in my car by swerving, I'm going to hit that dog first. Here we have two lane roads with houses right next to the road. For the most part, "going around" isn't an option without hitting someone or something. A person's first instinct is to swerve and avoid anything in the road but if I had to choose between hitting a dog and hitting another car or running off the road (which, here on the island "off the road" often times means "off the cliff"), I'll choose hitting the dog. And no, I wouldn't just leave it there.