Woman Rescues Lost Dog on Taconic Hours After Election Loss

Amanda Miller was up before dawn Thursday, removing her campaign signs from the Taconic State Parkway after losing Rhinebeck's Democratic primary for Town Supervisor. Then she spotted something moving across the southbound lanes near mile marker 66.

At first, she couldn't tell what it was. The tailless animal could have been a pig or even a wolf in the early morning light.

When Miller realized it was a dog, she pulled onto the narrow shoulder and flagged down a passing utility truck. The driver warned her this was the parkway's most dangerous stretch, where a Bard College professor had been killed just months earlier while changing a tire.

"It's a dog," Miller told him. He agreed to help.

Miller called 911, but traffic was light and she didn't want to wait. She sprinted across the southbound lanes to the median, where she found the spotted black and white dog feeding on a deer carcass.

The dog wore a collar but no visible ID tag. Miller and the driver coaxed him toward them, unsure if he might be rabid or aggressive.

Together they walked the dog back across the Taconic and into Miller's backseat. He climbed onto the center console and settled in like he belonged there.

"Please be a nice dog," Miller thought.

The animal hospital wasn't open yet, and Miller didn't want to bring a strange dog home to her three small dogs and two young children. She drove to her law office instead.

There, she examined the collar more closely and found a phone number printed on the back along with a name: Jake.

Sunny's Take

Jake's owner in nearby Stanford said the dog roams freely on their 10-acre property but had never wandered this far. Miller guessed the deer carcass had lured him onto the parkway.

Within hours, Jake was reunited with his family. In a text exchange afterward, one of the owners asked for her name.

"Amanda Miller. I was just running for Town Supervisor and was out picking up signs," she replied.

"You have my vote," he joked back.

Two weeks earlier, Miller had told reporters that if voters didn't elect her, she'd simply channel her energy into another cause. She'd keep sprinting, just in a different direction.

Her next mission came sooner than expected, on a dangerous highway at dawn, for a spotted dog named Jake who needed someone willing to run toward trouble instead of away from it.