A DOG’S JOURNEYINGS

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 12 July 1935, Page 4

A DOG’S JOURNEYINGS

HAWERA SPANIEL COAIES HOAIE There was jubilation m a Hawera household this week when the family pet, a black cocker spaniel, which had been lost for about fifteen months, was returned to its home. “Chum” is an ardent motorist, and it was his fondness for riding in cars which brought about his long separation from his- owners and made him a temporary resident first of Te Kuiti and then of a backcountry station —and may no of other parts of the North Island, for all that anyone knows. * This spaniel is by way- of becoming a local celebrity, for he was the cause of a good joke at liis owner’s expense at the time of his disappearance. The owner, a well-known Hawera businessman, advertised for the dog when ho first disappeared. A black cocker spaniel was brought to his office by two small, boys. He gratefully pushed some silver into their eager hands, but a few minutes later he saw the dog jump into another car, which was immediately driven away. Some quick work was done on the telephone and it turned out that the bereft dog-owner had paid the reward to two small boys who had picked up another businessman’s black spaniel a few y'ards down the street.

The missing dog was eventually given up by the Hawera family as lost. Last Easter the owner was spending the holidays at a fishing bacii oil the Alokau River. One night the conversation turned to dogs, their loyalty', their intelligence and so on. A member of the party mentioned that a man living at the back of Awakino had brought home from Tc Kuiti a good-looking black spaniel which had jumped on to the bonnet of his car when it was parked in that town. The Hawera visitor remarked that, he had once had a dog which liked riding on the bonnet of his car, and told the ;sad story of its disappearance. As a result of the conversation the Hawera man was persuaded to get in touch‘with the backcountry station. He did so, though it seemed a forlorn hope that the dog picked up in Te Kuiti should turn out to be flic same which had staged a complete disappearance in Hawera a year earlier. Telephone conversations', letters,and photographs of the missing dog passed between the parties and this week a black cocker spaniel was joyfully received back into the bosom of the Hawera family. It would be a fitting ending to add that “Chum” has come back never more to roam, but with a dog like that one never knows.