Songfacts®:

• Griffin writes about her feelings over unwanted and abused animals in this haunting tune. She penned the song sometime after seeing a dog running loose by the interstate as she returned home to Texas from Nashville. "I looked out onto the median strip and there was this big, big brown pit bull, just darting down the middle," Griffin recalled to Country Weekly. "It just took my breath away because it was so beautiful. I just kept driving for a second, then I thought to myself, 'Wow, that dog's done for.'"
• The album American Kid features a number of other songs about death, mostly in reference to her father. This song looks at the topic from a different angle, as Griffin sees a dog on the highway and knows that nothing good will come from it. The metaphor acts as a thin wall between a song about an actual dog and the loss of faith in the wake of devastation.