SEATTLE — Of the tens of thousands of riders Metro Transit in Seattle moves each day, few are greeted by a smile when they slobber on the seats.
“She sits here just like a person does,” one rider said. “She’s a person. And all the bus driver’s know her.”
Eclipse, a black lab/bull mastiff mix, uses Seattle’s buses to get around. She often roams the aisles of the D Line looking for a seat and will hop up next to a stranger, which makes perfect sense for a dog who rides the bus alone, KOMO reported.
“She gets on and off by herself,” passenger Miles Montgomery said. “She was most concerned about seeing out the window.
“And I thought, man oh man, this is nuts.”
Montgomery snapped a selfie with the dog after seeing her ride solo first-hand.
“The dog gets off at the stop and the dog park and gets of the bus, and I just look out the window and I’m like, did that just happen?” Montgomery said.
This dog didn’t start out riding the bus alone by herself. Like most great things in this world, it happened — on accident.
“She’s been urbanized, totally,” owner Jeff Young said. “She’s a bus-riding, side-walk walking dog.”
Young says it started with constant trips together to the dog park. Before getting on the bus by their apartment, Young would stop to smoke a cigarette. If the busgot there before he was done, Eclipse would take off without him.
“We get separated,” Young said. “She gets on the bus without me. And I catch up with her at the dog park.”
A dog amid humans. A canine among commuters. Proving even public transit, apparently, has gone to the dogs.
A spokesman for Metro Transit said it loves that Eclipse is a supporter of public transit, adding “She would be much safer if she had her owner on a leash.”
