“Citizen Canine” is a column that will honor a local dog in each article. If you know of a dog we should spotlight, contact ctzncanine@gmail.com.)

Early one morning in March of this year, Chestnut Hill’s Holly and Andrew Wolanin were awakened by a dog cry, followed by a loud BANG. It was 6:30 a.m. and it was still dark outside. Wolanin was about to wake up her daughters Liv, then in seventh grade, and Violet, then in fourth grade, and help them get ready for school.

Instead, she found herself throwing on a sweatshirt, grabbing her glasses and running out of the house on Lincoln Drive. She thought that one of the Labradoodle puppies from across their street may have been hit by a car. Outside, she found two cars stopped in front of her house, one behind the other. Two men, one of whom was very angry, stood by. One man had stopped short in his car when he ran over a small dog, and the other rear-ended him because he could not brake in time.

“I asked if they hit a dog,” said Wolanin. “The angry man in back quickly said, ‘The dog’s fine!’”

But the other man, who had driven the car in front, told Wolanin that he was disabled and unable to bend down and check under his car. So Wolanin got down on her hands and knees and looked.

“These two little eyes were blinking at me,” Wolanin said.

By then Andrew had joined them. He tried to grab the dog from under the car, but, Wolanin explained, “the dog was vicious and terrified. She was biting and scratching.”

Her husband was unable to retrieve the dog. Then a construction worker approached and offered to help get the pup out with his broom. So Wolanin took a blanket and held it beside the car as her husband and the construction worker gently prodded the dog out.

“I put the blanket on her and just held and rubbed her, and I’m like, ‘It’s OK; it’s OK,’” said Wolanin. “There was hair everywhere. I think she tumbled underneath the car.”

Wolanin, a physician’s assistant, decided to take the dog to the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) in Philadelphia.

“We put her in a big container that we had [previously] kept Christmas decorations in.”

After Wolanin put the container in the car, the tiny dog popped up and stared at her. “Her funny underbite makes her look like she’s always mad. I looked at her before we drove and said, ‘Listen, we’re going to be friends. Please don’t attack me in the car.'”

It took about 20 minutes to get the dog to the SPCA, and the dog did not touch Wolanin. The dog weighed 11 pounds and was so underweight that Wolanin thought she was a Pug-Terrier mix, but she turned out to be a Brussels Griffon.

“I read that they’re super-rare and expensive,” said Wolanin.

Over the next few days, Wolanin and the girls could not stop thinking about the dog.“But we are big-dog people,” said Wolanin.

In fact, they already owned Fiona, a six-year-old Great Dane. “Long story short, we buttered up [Andrew],” Wolanin quipped.

Once Andrew, a psychologist, was on board, the family visited the dog for a “meet and greet” to see if they wanted to adopt her. They even brought Fiona. The meeting went well, and they decided to take the dog, which the SPCA had named Ruby.

Ruby was not trained in any way, and it took her two weeks to get used to living with the Wolanins. “She was terrified at first. It took us 20 minutes to coax her out of the car,” explained Wolanin.

“Then we had her meet Fiona outside and we stayed in the yard for at least an hour. When we brought her in (the house), she was very scared. She wasn’t aggressive unless you tried to pick her up. Even then she never bit anyone; she just let you know that she was scared. She seemed to like the third floor and was hiding under the guest bed for a good part of her first day.”

Ruby became more and more comfortable every day. “She slept in the crate in our bedroom for the first week, and then eventually we moved the crate to Liv‘s room, but she quickly moved into Liv’s bed and sleeps there still with Fiona!”

Based on her teeth, the vet thinks that Ruby is between one year and two years old. Based on how she plays, the family thinks she is closer to one.

Seven months later, Ruby now weighs 15 pounds and fits right in with the Wolanin family.