Mark Trail: Sassy, excited about chasing a rabbit, runs onto a highway and is struck by a speeding car.

I'm actually rather fond of Sassy, so I don't terribly enjoy seeing her tiny puppy body thrown into the air and falling broken to the ground. That said, I do think the physics presented here are worth a bit of investigation and that things are perhaps not as they might at first seem.

In the first panel, we see Sassy running in the same direction as the car. This should make her fairly easy to avoid, but the driver still manages to hit her. This suggests to me some sort of evil plot, and we should probably not rule out the possibility that one of the Parker brothers--or some similarly long-haired hooligan--is the one behind the wheel.

In the second panel, we see that the impact of the collision has propelled Sassy high into the air. As this would not be the result of a normal collision, this is yet further evidence of foul play, suggesting as it does that the car must be equipped with something similar to a cow catcher. It's true that this is not apparent in the first panel, but that's probably just the result of poor drawing.

In the third panel, we find Sassy lying in the road disoriented, but otherwise seemingly uninjured. This suggests that Sassy was not the true target of this hit after all. Indeed, I believe this has all been part of an elaborate plot and that Sassy is nothing more than bait. The shaggy-haired perpetrator will now wait in the shadows for Rusty to find his poor, injured dog and run into the road after her. At which point this entire sequence will repeat itself, only this time it will be Rusty in mortal danger. Because what good's a Mark Trail story, anyway, if Rusty's not in mortal danger?