As New Lenox Family's Dog Lay Dying, Stranger's Kindness Changed Everything

NEW LENOX, IL — It was their thing: a morning ritual for a 1-year-old pup and his person. A game of "hide and seek" in the bushes of the family's front yard. German shepherd Bruno would weave in and out of the brush, between leaps into the air to try and catch birds.

"... like a kangaroo, he’d jump on all fours trying to catch the birds out of the sky," said Bruno's owner, Jennifer Schindler. "German shepherds are big puppies for a long time, very playful."

They'd play along the brush line—"because it had the most cover," she said—and Bruno had been learning his perimeters through verbal commands. He knew he was not to go past the treeline on their property, Schindler said. She had turned to "hide" from Bruno, when she heard a crash in front of their home on Delaney Road in unincorporated New Lenox—a sound so loud she thought two cars had collided.

Her family's beloved Bruno had been struck by a car in the street just before 7 a.m., the impact so great he was sent airborne and landed back in the family's yard. Panicked, she lay in the snow with him, his tail still wagging slightly. The driver of the car that had hit him at an estimated 50 mph kept driving. As her world stood still, 10 to 15 cars passed.

And then "Nick" showed up.

"I don’t know what I was doing, other than that I was screaming for someone to help me," she said. "Nick literally pulled me out of the snow."

A perfect stranger whose name took her minutes to learn, he centered her, she said, pulling her from panic and into the moment, reminding her that her dog was still alive, and she should comfort him.

"'He hears you, he’s alive, he’s wagging his tail,'" she remembers him saying. "I said 'He’s alive, but he’s going to die,' and he said, 'Yes, that's what's happening, stay with him. I’m here, you’re not by yourself.' And he just walked me through it."

Bruno was the family's first dog, a fur sibling to Schindler's children, a 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. They'd lived in what she described on social media as "the blue house on Delaney Road" for just over a year. They'd moved in in December 2021, and brought home an 8-week-old Bruno just a couple of days later.

"It was the first time that I’ve had a dog," she said. "We should have skipped 'hide and seek,' it was too cold, we should have stayed on the couch. But it’s what we did every day. How could I have possibly known that today would be the day?"

Schindler recounted the minutes spent holding her dog as the man named Nick whom she had never met walked her through the impending loss.

"That made all the difference, when you’re hit with something like this, you can’t even think," she told Patch. "You’re just so stuck in that experience and the emotion of it. You can’t think clear. Someone coming in and being able to help you in a compassionate way, in a way that they can understand that this is hard, this is painful. … I would have laid there, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything for a while. Having someone come in, give you that kindness to help move you, matters."

Bruno died, and Nick again nudged her into next steps with compassion and kindness.

"He took control of things," she said. "He told me to go get a blanket, that we have to move him. Had he not, I would have just laid there until somebody came there.

"...Bruno was a baby still, he was still learning," she said. "He was a playful guy, it’s just horrific that he died this way."

Later that morning, she took Bruno to be cremated. When she returned, she learned the Will County Sheriff's Department had located the driver and car involved. He was not local, Schindler wanted to stress. He was from a neighboring town, and not somebody local who many might seek to vilify. She had taken to social media to share the story of her encounter with Nick and her dog's passing, and she had observed the outrage so many expressed toward the driver.

Instead, she wants the world to know about Nick. The man who listened as a woman who was days away from the 13th anniversary of her son's stillbirth told him, "I can't do this!"

"'You can, because you are,'" he told her.

Schindler said Nick's black pick-up was "barely in park" before he had gotten out to help them. She praised him on social media, saying, "You are family, knock on my door anytime you pass. You are always welcome and if I can ever repay you, I will try every time."

Nick's kindness helped get her through one of her darkest moments, she said.

"He just walked me through it and took it, absorbed that in a beautiful way," she said. "I’ve never had anything like that happen from somebody I don’t even know. He just absorbed the shock and the blow in such a beautiful way."

A colleague of Nick's read Schindler's post on Facebook, and immediately thought of him, because the house would be on his way to work. She reached out and asked him,"did you have a bad morning?" and he said, "Oh my God, how did you know?"

Nick's compassion and kindness toward Schindler didn't surprise her, the coworker said, as they're all "dog people." And Nick also has a German shepherd.

"... and it’s his baby," she said. "So I know that he’s very broken.

"I just put two and two together, and was just like, ‘holy cow.’ ... I'm glad he stopped."

Schindler wants him recognized for his compassion and empathy.

"What happened was awful, but there’s Nick," she said. "And maybe I wouldn’t have shared that Bruno died had Nick not stopped. But Nick deserves the world to know that he exists. Because I’ve never in my life experienced the kind of kindness that he offered today."

Her father nudged her to update her social media post with information about the driver involved, but she decided against it.

"I said what I wanted," she said. "Everyone knows to slow down, and everyone knows Nick exists, wherever he’s at."