We nearly acquired a dog on our last trip to France. We were driving up the A16 motorway and came off at the service area Aire de L'Épitre for a quick pee. There was a dog running along the motorway and into the service area ahead of us. We parked up and got out and it ran straight up to us, and tried to get into the car, giving my son a severe dose of the habdabs (he doesn't like dogs).
It was a braque français , a pointer, and as we stood there we could hear the chasseurs' shotguns popping off in the fields behind the service area. We had been spotting them all the way - there is a fashion for French hunters to wear bright orange gear these days, ever since some poor bloke shot and killed his son by mistake while they were out hunting in more traditional green camo.
So this dog must have jumped the fence onto the motorway, and just kept on running. Luckily he was wearing a collar with a name and a phone number on it. Judging that the dog's name was Hugo, but that the phone number was that of his owner, I rang up and told the lady who answered where her missing dog was.
She turned up ten minutes later in a black car like mine, and she was petite and dark haired like my wife - which accounts for why Hugo the dog chose us!
