He just ran.

Should someone have called 1-800-RUN-OFF2? Oopps, wrong hotline. Jo Jo isn't a kid or even an adult. He's a dachshund. Try 1-800-CALL-ASPCA.

But no one called them.

CNN reported the story of Jo Jo in a warm and fuzzy fashion. Never mind that the main character of the tale lost part of his, uh, tail, and a chunk of an ear after a train ran over him. Oh, yeah. Not once, but twice, hey maybe three times, heck maybe more, in the five days Jo Jo was MIA, he was sideswiped by a roaring locomotive.

"It's hard telling how many trains went over that poor little dog," said one conductor, who ran over Jo Jo twice himself.

The interesting part is that Jo Jo was only a mile from home when he was first hit. One would think the family had been looking for their companion, putting up posters, asking around, maybe even walking those tracks themselves. Guess it was too cold for hiking around in the bushes.

The tiny drifter even earned himself a renegade-flavored nickname: Railroad Jo Jo. CNN reported he'd made a legend of himself by being able to huddle low enough in the track ruts for the trains to clear his body. Not sure if that's the stuff legends are made of, or just a terrified dog's survival instincts kicking in.

The conductor mentioned above thought he killed Jo Jo the first time he saw him in early November, when, as it turned out, Jo Jo was only about a mile from home.

"We saw him, and he was feisty. He was barking at us," the man said. "I thought, 'Oh boy, this is bad.' We just mowed him down."

Oh, boy? Kind of the conductor to call home and ask someone to go check on the dog.

Five days later, the same train was riding the tracks in the opposite direction and the same conductor saw Jo Jo again, not far from the spot where the same train had hit him before. Jo Jo was on the tracks and, uh huh, you guessed it, the train rolled him again.

This time, some compassion seemed to wash over the conductor -- or maybe he just had that legend-worship thing going on -- so he drove back to the area in his own vehicle and walked on the tracks in the area where he'd last seen Jo Jo. He finally found the dog, shivering in the weeds, wounded and near starvation -- less than two miles from his home.

"He was bones when I found him," he said. No surprise there.

Yes, that's what happens when families let their pets roam. They get hungry. They get hurt. Sometimes they even die from being hungry or injured -- or run over by a dozen trains.

Jo Jo's family said the 3-year-old pet "looked like a wet rat" when they were reunited.

"He laid by our fireplace for two straight days," Jo Jo's human said. "His tail's a little shorter now. But he's fine."

Fine? The tail probably hurts like hell while the forced amputation heals and the dog's ear probably throbs now and then as well. I doubt Jo Jo would call that "fine."

Wonder how short these people will let Jo Jo's tail get before they start caring about the dog and not let him wander around?

Perhaps Jo Jo ran away for a good reason. In which case, all of us might want to keep an eye pealed out for a brown dachshund, with a tail about as short as his legs, toting a little checkered nap sack and sign that says, "Anywhere but here, ya hear?"

Author's Note: The above is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the irresponsible. The sarcasm is fully intentional.

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