Bus driver helps dog find her way home

On Tuesday afternoon, Gerry O’Donnell welcomed an unlikely passenger onto her Halifax Transit No. 10 bus.

At a bus stop, the bus driver saw a passenger holding onto a 2-year-old husky which, moments earlier, had been dodging cars on a busy road. The passenger told O’Donnell that animal control was on its way.

“The passenger told me that the dog almost got hit by two cars and of course my heart sank,” O’Donnell, who owns two dogs, told the Chronicle Herald. “Huskies are runners and I knew she had probably made it out of her yard.”

The passenger needed to get to Halifax — and O’Donnell was certain animal control wouldn’t be there for a while — so O’Donnell “broke the golden rules” and allowed the husky, named Keiko, onto her bus.

“Keiko was as good as gold,” she said. “She just has a beautiful temperament.”

“I knew she was well taken care of and well loved and I just wanted her to get back home.”

At the end of her run, O’Donnell took a photo of the dog and shared it with the Nova Scotia Lost Dog Network.

Within minutes, Paige Price, the dog’s owner, was found. A “really thankful” Price picked Keiko up from O’Donnell’s home soon after.

Price told the Chronicle Herald that Keiko must have “leaped quite a distance” to escape her Dartmouth backyard. Price’s father had dug a trench beside the fence to keep the dog from using the deep snow as part of an escape route.

“She’s a very energetic dog,” she said of Keiko. “She’s gotten out before, but she came back.”

Now safe at home, Keiko has become a local star, thanks to O’Donnell’s viral pic of the dog.

“Favourite picture of all time,” Price wrote of the photo of her dog sitting patiently on the bus.