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What drove that little thing to zigzag his way across the super highway to rescue an injured dog, as big and small vehicles whizzed past him at breakneck speed? (Feminists out there, please forgive my inconsideration here, but I simply need a consistent pronoun for our hero.) The highway looked scary even for athletic human beings, let alone a small, four-legged animal with limited vision.

Stupidity at its worst? Whenever I watched the video clip again I thought he was going to get hit for sure this time. It was that breathtaking and frightening.

Or heroism at its best? Surely he wasn't thinking about a warm home, YouTube stardom, editorial praise or even heaven afterwards. It must have been something very simple in his mind at that moment. Something like: "I've got to go out there and drag him (her?) to safety."

Did he know it was extremely dangerous? Did he realise he could easily die? He must have: the biggest warning sign was lying only 20 metres away, waiting for him to come to the rescue. It begged the biggest question: Why did he do it?

This is the hardest "why?" I have ever asked myself. And it would be a hundred times harder to answer if the other dog was neither his mate nor related to him. But we can never know. The injured dog died in the March incident and our apparently homeless hero has disappeared since. Although the entire world wants to adopt him now, he's unlikely to be found ever again.

Too much time has passed since March 23, and the recent publicity of the footage as part of an animal rights campaign won't change his destiny.

Maybe he's rummaging through garbage somewhere in Chile, having been shooed from place to place. Wherever he is, or whatever he is doing, he is oblivious to the ramifications of what he did nine months ago. If he's starving, injured or ailing, will he curse his luck? Will he say "What did I do to deserve this?"? Does he still remember the highway drama? If he does, will he say, "So much for doing good. I shall be selfish from now on"?

He won't. Simply because it was so obvious in the video clip that he wasn't aware he was doing something good or performing a heroic act. Busy searching for food and for a safe place to sleep, day in and day out, he may even have forgotten about it already. If he's capable of forgetting that, shall we call it "goodness"? Perhaps as far as he's concerned the highway episode was something normal, that he had done before and would do again if he comes across another friend in distress.

It may be the best script, after all, that he went his own way after the incident and the TV footage was publicised when it was too late to locate him. He might have been confused as hell if he had been found, with all the TV spotlights, camera flashes, numerous pats on the back, big meals, loud applause and so on.

There are more similar deeds recorded on film, like a dog throwing itself in front of a bull and saving the life of an up-ended bullfighter; incidents that will make us ask the same questions.

All we can do is thank God for closed-circuit TV, the Internet and YouTube, which allowed us to glimpse this nameless little thing on that Chilean highway. The picture is as blurry as they come, but that's only fitting for the cleansing effect it's having on many human souls.

Should I end this by wishing him all the best? I'm not quite sure about that. Maybe all he needs is enough food, air to breath and a relatively safe street corner to sleep on. Maybe those things are all he needs so he has enough in him to pull another injured dog from a treacherous highway one more time.