Seattle dog rides city bus, report says

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Seattle dog rides bus to dog park alone

A look at smart black lab

Ask any city-dweller: ride the bus long enough and you'll see everything.

In Seattle, that now includes a dog for a fellow passenger.

KomoNews.com reports that commuters in the city's Belltown neighborhood have been joined in recent weeks by Eclipse, a black Labrador retriever who boards the bus by herself.

Where's she going? To the local dog park to hang out with her friends, of course.

The trips began when her owner, Jeff Young, took too long to finish a cigarette while waiting at a bus stop. Trained to heel but apparently not to wait, the dog hopped on the D Line bus, and she's since made several trips by herself.

"She's been here the last two years, so she's been urbanized, totally. She's a bus-riding, sidewalk-walking dog," Young told KomoNews.com. "Probably once a week I get a phone call. 'Hi. I have your dog Eclipse here on 3rd and Bell,'" he said. "I have to tell them, 'no. She's fine.' She knows what she's doing."

As the bus's only canine passenger, Eclipse, who roams the aisles and hops onto seats next to strangers, generates a lot of attention from the human bus riders.

"All the bus drivers know her. She sits here just like a person does," commuter Tiona Rainwater told the outlet on a downtown trip on Monday. "She makes everybody happy. How could you not love this thing?"

Jeff Switzer, a spokesman for Metro Transit, told FoxNews.com that he wasn't aware of any complaints stemming from Eclipse's rides, though he said the transit authority does urge owners to leash their dogs.

He does joke, however: "We think Eclipse would be much safer in the world if she kept her owner on a leash."

All well and good. But does she know to pay exact fare when she boards the bus?

"I don't know if she can read the fare policy," Switzer said.

FoxNews.com's Karl de Vries contributed to this report.

Click here to read more from KomoNews.com.