Well... This is one of the few (if not only) areas where front wheel drive cars are way more fun that rear wheel drive cars. You see rear wheel drive cars are considerable more "directionally stable" which I accidentally verified when my dog decided to stumble across the shifter (shoving the car in reverse) in a Camaro we had at (once again) about 50 mph. Outside of a rather huge and quite confusing cloud of tire smoke...nothing exciting really happened.

I would have to say *extreme luck* kept you and Fido from harm.  Directional stability just means you flip end-over-end, if the u-joint snaps behind the transmission, similar to a pole-vault.  Another fun event would be if the drive shaft bounced off the road and up through the floor.  Gives a new meaning to being rear-ended if the shaft desides to come up under your seat.  Of course you may not notice as you pull the steering wheel out of your mouth.

You'd be surprised what an 80s era junk-yard had.