Dog crashed couple’s truck into swimming pool

Caroline, a black labrador, is in the doghouse after she crashed a 1988 Dodge Ram into a swimming pool. Michael and Ruth Smith took Caroline along for a ride on Friday as they stopped to pick up some groceries from a store in Erwin, North Carolina. Michael Smith said that’s when the dog got spooked by something.



"When she gets scared she will go down on the floorboard of the truck," he said. Ruth Smith was driving when the 90 pound dog stepped on her foot. Her husband said he tried to pull Caroline off. "Before I could we were wide open," he said. "We were probably going 50 to 55 miles per hour." Ruth Smith said she knew she had to keep the truck straight and aimed for a wooden fence.



"I didn't know what else to do," she said. The truck ploughed through the fence and splashed into a backyard pool. "We hit the water and I'm going 'where in the name of God is this water coming from,'" Michael Smith said. The pool owner, John McNamara, said he was in the kitchen with his wife at the time of the crash and told his wife there was a truck in the pool.



"She just laughed at me and said, 'what are you doing, smoking or something?,'" he said. Michael Smith had a few cuts on his hands, otherwise everyone made it out OK. "I hate that it happened to (McNamara's) pool, but I think that it might have saved our lives," he said. Michael Smith also doesn’t blame Caroline for the crash. "It is just one of those off accidents that you read about in the newspaper or see on the news," he said. Authorities say no charges are expected to be filed.

With news video.