Rescuing Tonks

Our dog Tonks is pretty wonderful. She's super sweet and loving, loyal, obedient and will follow you to the ends of the earth. And as I've mentioned, there's just one flaw: every once in awhile she takes off anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours. It doesn't happen a lot, but when it does, we worry because of the highway below. As Jenn mentioned, (from when she was growing up), you kind of want the dog to have a happy dog life, to run around and just take the chance of the danger.

While I was in Auckland, she took off once and didn't return until 3am. Beau got out of bed to let her in, and told me, "I expected her to smell like booze and cigarettes."

I've been back here "in the bush" for about a month now, and she hasn't taken off once. I was kind of hoping her wandering days were over. Well, until yesterday. Around 7pm, she took off. We called and called, she didn't come back.

At first, it was not a big deal. She usually turns up a couple hours later, appropriately sheepish where she gets lectured and put on the chain to think about what she's done. Yeah, that works really well.

It was getting pretty dark and she hadn't returned. We kept going outside, calling, whistling,...which usually brings her crashing back, but no, no dog. This was our pissed off stage. "When she gets back, I'm gonna kill her!"

It was a coal black night, and I'm not exagerrating when I say you could hardly see in front of your face. With no city lights, no street lights, nothing but surrounding jungle and no moon, there's nothing to light the way. I got in the car and with the brights on, drove slowly down the road, back and forth. If it wasn't in the beam of the lights, it was total darkness. I saw a dead possum and a live possum, but no Tonks. At least I didn't see a dead dog on the road.

It was well past midnight, and several more attempts to walk around and call/whistle to her hadn't worked. Now I was at the worried stage.

"She'll turn up, she always does," said Beau, "She'll come up on the porch and wait for us to let her in."

I went to bed nervous and laid there half-awake, half listening for her return. After an hour or so I got up and brought my pillows to the couch which is opposite the sliding glass doors and porch. I laid down to sleep. Didn't sleep well, and when I finally got up, no Tonks.

I went back to bed and crawled in. I thought if I could just make time pass, I'd wake up and she'd be there. Shortly thereafter, Beau woke me up.

"I'm going to go look for her, want to come?" I immediately ogred out of bed and threw on some clothes. We drove up and down the street, much farther than we thought possible for her to travel, crossing the river far to the other side. No sign.

"There's no way she wouldn't have returned by now. There are no good reasons to be gone this long: hit by a car, injured or someone took her." (I'm always worried she'll be kidnapped since every pig dog owner within a 20 mile radius has eyed her lasciviously and commented on what a good breeder she'd be. Wonder how long it'd take til they figured out she's been fixed).

The day continued. I walked our land calling her name and pausing to listen for a possible whimper. I returned with soaked pants but no dog.

The day passed slowly. By now I was resigning myself to the fact she was gone, most likely hit by a car and bounced off the road. It's weird all the strange stuff that goes through your mind from regular sad feelings to bizarre practical thoughts. How depressed I felt because I really love that dog, but at the same time I was thinking things like, "Aw, she's just a dog," and "Well, I guess we won't have such a hard time getting a new place without a dog..."

For some reason, I grabbed our binoculars and walked to the picnic table that sat at the edge of our property before it dropped off like a cliff. Straight ahead (west) is the ocean. Directly to the left (south) is the river. The river meets the ocean in the southwest. Also right there is a long sandy strip that narrows or widens depending on the tide, and is always populated by some hardcore fishermen. Except for today.

Today is Saturday and you're not allowed to fish there on Saturdays. In 1900, 16 Maori children of a nearby village were being ferried across this very river by two men in a canoe. They attended a school on the other side and it was the only way to get there. It's not certain what happened, perhaps a flash flood, but all on board were washed away and drowned. The village lost all its children in one terrible accident. So to this day, you cannot fish there on Saturdays or the 12th of the month.

I climbed on top of the picnic table and stood on the edge. I raised the binoculars and looked out at the strips of sand orphaned from the river and ocean's embrace. I scanned a little and suddenly....there she was!

I couldn't fucking believe it. Beau was out on the porch watching me and I started calling frantically at him to come over. I looked again, there she was, tiny even in the scope of the binoculars, marooned on a thin strip of sand surrounded by water. WTF!? Beau took the binoculars and looked himself. "Tonks!" he shouted out. Her head snapped around and looked in our direction. Thank god she's a red dog, otherwise she would have been imperceptible amongst the endless stretch of sand and rocks. She must have ran out there and somehow got stranded by the tide.

We tore out of there and sprinted to the car. Beau careened down the winding driveway. "Beau.." I said. "Sorry," he grinned and slowed slightly. We hit the highway and after a minute had pulled off of it near the entrance to the beach. It's the same entrance those children used 110 years ago. A natural stairway stomped out of the roots of trees and hardpacked mud, so steep in some parts you have to practically climb down from one step to another. Beau and I scampered and skidded downward through the dark foliage.

We finally hit the beach, which is made entirely of rocks and driftwood. We crunched and wobbled over the ground. I couldn't see her, but Beau kept leading me forward. "There she is, there!" he pointed. I squinted. I couldn't see her. "Look over my shoulder and follow my finger," he suggested. I planted my chin on his shoulder and looked. There was her tiny form.

"She's trapped," I said. I had taken Tonks to another part of the river just a week before and as she and I had crossed a part that was about 3-feet high, the current had scared her as she swam across. Now she was surrounded by water. I wondered how long she had been there.

After walking around some more obstacles, we finally got to her, water separating us. "She looks hungry," said Beau. We took a few steps into the water. It was too deep for her to walk, but didn't seem too swift to swim in. "The tide's coming in," said Beau.

"Come on, come on, Tonks!" Beau called out to her. After prancing back and forth briefly, she dove into the water and started swimming toward us. I sloshed toward her, hoping to meet her halfway in case. But she made it alright, shaking off the water next us. I was so happy I burst into tears and had to sit on a large piece of driftwood. The dog was ecstatic, dancing and wagging away. I felt emotionally spent. "I thought she was dead," I said.

We walked back and heaved ourselves up the path back to the top where the car was. And now we're back, and it's as if it never happened.

Weird.

This Gnome Used to Have Some Dignity

It wasn't that long ago that I was walking across our carpark and Tonks starting barking her head off at some of the ground cover along the house. This groundcover is a plant with long, thick green blades...like grass gone B-movie.

She was still going at it, her hackles up, and I peered into the plants and saw something. My heart leapt into my throat. An animal? There are only so many four-legged critters in New Zealand, most of them introduced pests of some sort. This was something little and orange.

Taking a closer look, I saw that it was one of a few gnomes that the owners had decorated their gardens with. It had hair, a cute little straw hat, some sort outerwear, and feet the size of a hobbit. Somehow it had spooked Tonks into believing it was an animate object. Who knows? Maybe it comes alive when your back is turned. I calmed her down and went back inside.

A few days later, the gnome had mysteriously disappeared.

A day after that...I found the straw hat laying in the front yard, on the other side of the house. Bits of his hair were strewn here and there.

*sigh*

I had to assume foul play. I only have one suspect.

I finally found his body....far from his original post or his hat or hair. And here he stands today. Poor thing. It's going to take a lot of therapy to get over this shit.

Tonks Sucks, I Suck

My "puppy" Tonks is 7 months old, which Beau keeps reminding me means she's "still a puppy" but I'm pretty much fed up with all the puppy shit and think it's about time it ended. I'll go through about a week of totally loving this dog -- she'll be perfect! Fun, funny, a good companion, obedient, etc. Then the next week, she'll chew the shit out of 5 favorite things, bite the cat's head, and the one that makes me the craziest -- takes off from our "land" and runs off down the highway. Yes, the HIGHWAY! I know it's a 2-lane country highway, but it's mad curvy, sees a very small, but steady stream of traffic, and ... it's a HIGHWAY!

This is a big bummer for me, because when we moved here, one of the best things was that Tonks could just basically live outside all day, running around the hills and different yards of our place. Spending most of the day inside, I'd occasionally see her trotting happily around, tail high and slightly wagging, face looking jolly.

Then we figured out that she had not only figured out how to make it down to the highway (which is actually not all that easy since we're in a dense forest area), but that she had found a dead hawk on the road and... WAS EATING IT! I know! Gross! She brought it back up to the lawn around the house, and there were brown feathers and hawk guts EVERYWHERE. Totally puke-inducing.

So, I started going outside more often, at least once an hour, and I'd call her name to make sure she was around. After a few bellows, she usually would bound up to me at 100 mph, tongue lolling out, all expectant. I'd usually give her a tiny treat for her obedience.

But we let her into the house in the evenings, and just the other day, just around dusk, we let her out to go wee. After about 15 minutes, we noticed that she hadn't returned on her own, as normal. We went outside and starting calling and calling, whistling and whistling. No dog.

"She went to the highway," said Beau. I knew he was right...and I was scared. She'd never NOT come back before, even when it was clear she had been up to no good -- coming back after several calls, drenched, and covered in mud.

So, we got in Beau's shithole pickup and started down the highway looking for her. Beau looked out one side, me the other. We got all the way to our neighbor's place a few kilometers down the road.... no dead dog on the road....phew, but still, no dog.

We turned around and started driving back, and halfway there, she popped out of the bush on the side of the road -- the OTHER side of the road by the ocean, a couple miles from our house. And this all in about 15 minutes!

I was slightly relieved, but a lot more pissed. She jumped into the back of the truck, and we went back, before I killed her on her own.

So, more and more often, she's been spending a lot of time hooked on her long chain. Of course, even though it is rather long, and she is under an enormous car park shelter, she hates it. Better than having her splattered all over the highway, but I still hate keeping her chained up so often.

And how does she show her dissatisfaction? By chewing the FUCK out of anything she can possibly reach. Bags of soil, shoes, garden tools, plants, etc. It's like a little kid -- you try to remove anything you think they can possibly reach, and yet, they still seem to get to stuff...

Yesterday, I came out and was surprised to find Beau's NEW swim fins on the ground, near the guilty-looking dog. They had been hanging in a net bag on a hook up on one of the carport's wooden beams. Tonks had chewed through the net bag, the fins had dropped out, and she had then proceeded to chew on the fins themselves, taking them from shiny and new, to shitty looking. After smacking Tonks on the butt with one of them, and giving her a few choice words, I placed them on top of the car's trunk to get them out of her way. Then I went to feed the chickens.

A couple hours later I had to go to the local medical clinic to get some blood drawn. It's approximately a 20 minute drive to the clinic, and when I had called them from home, they had told me if I had to make it there within the next 30 minutes. Naturally, most of the way there I was behind a slow car, which can be rather maddening when you're the ONLY two cars in the universe, which is what it feels like out here. Finally, we reached a straightaway, and the car sped up a bit, hooray! As I was singing along to my iTunes player and speeding up a little, I looked into my rearview mirror. I saw two bright blue shapes explode into the air behind me, flutter gracefully, and then disappear out of my view.

FUCK!!!

The swim fins. I had totally forgotten they were there. And I had already been on the road for 15 minutes! I immediately pulled over next to an old tractor, then turned around and drove as slowly as I could up and down the road. Didn't see them anywhere. Lots of yellow brush grass on the sides of the road. I looked at the clock -- I had 10 minutes to get to the clinic. I was about 5 minutes away. But I did have a small dilemma -- you leave something like that out here for more than a few minutes, and it's probably going to be happily claimed by someone as their new prize.

Well, I decided I had to go get the blood drawn (immigration thing) and then I'd come back and do a better search. I walked back to the car and saw the old tractor, which I thought was just a piece of junk on the side of the road, pulling onto the road. A man, who looked like he was about 126 years old, was driving.

I got in the car and pulled slowly up beside him. I tried to talk to him through the window, but nothing could be heard above the rattle of the tractor. We pulled over.

"Hi!" I said, "I live here...over at the river...at Dave's place..." I was trying to establish that I wasn't the typical white devil that many Maori can see us as, but as a legitimate local. I was okay!

The man opened his mouth, which appeared to be lacking any teeth, and kind of moaned. Uh oh. It was quite possible that he was a local who only spoke Maori. I immediately went into my ESL-Teacher mode, gesticulating with my specialized language-barrier-beating sign language and talking slowly and clearly. He made a few more moan sounds, and I wasn't sure if he was getting any of it. Then, he began to speak English to me, and the more I talked, the more aware I became that yes, he spoke English, and yes, idiot that I was, probably understood every word I was saying. I told him about the fins.

"Ohhhh, someone probably picked them up..." he said. This almost made me laugh, since like I said, a few more minutes and yeah, I could probably kiss them goodbye.

After a few more awkward moments, I just let him know that if he should see them, they were mine, and I'd be back ASAP. Then, feeling a little more stupid, we both got back on our vehicles and were off.

I returned from the clinic about 20 minutes later, and parked the car on the side of the road. I got out, and started to walk, searching the side, peering into the bush. After I rounded a corner, and the car was out of sight, I started to wonder if leaving the keys in the car, even in the middle of nowhere, was really such a smart idea. Well, must have been, because I continued walking up the road, searching searching.... I got pretty far, and crossed over, to come back. Uh oh, this didn't look good.

Finally though, after passing a couple farms and a perplexed cow, I came upon one dusty fin sitting in the brush. Yes! Okay, the second couldn't be too far off, right? I know I never took Physics, but still. I didn't see it at first, but finally spotted it....down in a ditch about 10 feet down. Of course.

After a humorous descent through brambles and bushes, I reached and retrieved Beau's poor fin.

The ride home was surprisingly without incident.