go pūkeko

“And always remember to shut this gate before you leave,” Aunty repeated.

Max nodded as he grabbed his 10-speed and zoomed off into the salted air, which had been invisibly eating everything but the seat. He was chuffed to have been asked to care for Aunty’s prized dogs. He had never been given a responsible job like this, so mucking up was not an option. He liked his Aunty; she was kind and it was neat she lived down the road nowadays. 

The following day, Max slogged his way home from school into the nor ’easterly that whipped off the ocean. Once he reached Marine Parade, he turned into the driveway of the old two storey beach house, which didn’t look as shabby in the bright sunshine.

He repeated the instructions to himself, “Food in the garage fridge, key under the stone, large bowl for the bigger one, medium bowls for the others, lock the garage, shut the gate, and walk them every second day.”

The Alsatians strained their muzzles through the mesh and let off a wave of excited barks. Max slipped through the gate and spent the first ten minutes stroking and playing with them beside the garage. They were so good natured and had lovely thick gold and black coats. Aunty must be good at choosing dogs, he thought.

But boy could they eat, scoffing their generous servings of chunky meat roll in no time at all. Max thought they were going to eat the bowls. A row of cocked heads with big round eyes and long tongues stared up at him, but Max stuck to his instructions and put the cardboard box back in the fridge. After he patted each dog goodbye, he left and rode the last few kilometres home on his rusty trusty 10-speed.

The next afternoon was dull and overcast when he arrived. The rundown state of the house was the first thing Max noticed. But something else seemed different. He hopped off his bike and lay it on the unmown grass and entered the property. There were no nodding nuzzles to greet him, maybe they were asleep around the back in their kennel.

He called out, “Heidi, Joe, Daisy, Otto,” but not a single pattering paw or yapping jaw could be heard.

Max scanned the property. Suddenly his stomach hurt. He had walked in through an open gate. His mind whirred, could the dogs have opened the gate? Had Aunty returned from holiday early and taken them for a walk? Or had something more sinister happened, like the dogs being stolen?

He grabbed his bike and sped home, the chain ground and squeaked every revolution. But all Max could think of was the missing dogs.

“You must have left the gate open!” his mum yelled as she waved her clay covered hands in the pottery shed. “The dogs are Joanne’s family, she bred them. You can’t be trusted to do a simple task.”

Max was frequently disappointing his mum but she never usually got this angry. However, it was her sister and these were extra special dogs, as he just learnt. 

“Hurry up, jump in the car,” his mum shouted. 

The red Volkswagen Beetle screeched out of the garage and hooned up the road towards Aunty’s place. All the way his mum cursed Max for his incompetence. When they arrived, he hoped the dogs would wander out and line up at the wire netting, then woof their heads off. But it was just the cracked concrete and grass tufts behind the gate.

His mum left the bowls full and the gate ever so slightly ajar, and then they drove around the nearby blocks, knocked on doors, went over to the beach, across to the park. But there was no sign of the dogs anywhere. With every bark Max heard, he would turn around, only for the source to be too small, the wrong colour, too fat, too skinny, too hairy. It was no use; they would never be found in time and it was all his fault. 

“We’ll have to visit the pound, put notices in the shops, and place an ad in the papers,” said his mum.

Max counted, it was five days until Aunty was back, so this plan had a chance.

He cycled by Aunty’s house each day on the way to and from school. As he approached the house his heart beat faster, but the bowls were always full. Max really worried about the dogs – were they starving? where would they sleep? how would they cope with the cold nights? might they get kidnapped? and more. They visited the pound which was overflowing with canines that yelped and whined. Max thought they were not nearly as fine as Aunty’s pedigree ones. There had been not a single reply to the ads or notices, which was strange, how could the dogs just vanish?

With only one day to go until Aunty returned, the phone rang and his mum answered. Max’s ears pricked up, could the dogs have been found?

“Yes, yes…Alsatians…yes…Sydenham…got that.”

The phone hung up and his mum said two dogs fitting the description have been found in town. Max was excited but uneasy – why only two?

He joined mum on this latest mission, and the Beetle motored into the city to the address. Max pondered how the dogs had ended up so far away from the beach, it must be almost ten miles. Anyway, they jumped out of the car and knocked. A grey-haired man answered the door and what trotted along behind him – two dogs. They were Alsatians alright, or German Shepherds, these two names for the same dog always confused Max. 

But it wasn’t Heidi, nor Joe, nor Daisy nor Otto. They appeared similar but the first clue was they didn’t pay any notice to the strangers at the door. Max’s head dropped as his mum thanked the man for the phone call.  It was a quiet drive home; how was he going to be able to visit Aunty again and look her in the face?  

That night Max didn’t sleep much, he woke up often and wondered where the dogs were in the chilly blackness. In the morning he crawled out of bed and his mum said David had rung asking for him to go around for a play.

Max didn’t feel like going at all.

“You may as well go as the dogs are a lost cause, I don’t know what I’m going to tell Joanne,” his mum said in that tone which was all too familiar to Max.

So, Max pedalled slowly off to David’s, which was about halfway between his house and Aunty’s. When he got there, they decided to head over to the beach and make a hut from driftwood.

They walked along the trampled marram grass track and over the first set of dunes. Here it opened to vast sandy slopes sort of like a very mini version of the Sahara. Out of the desert loped, not a camel, but a furry creature, followed by another smaller one, then another and finally the smallest one at the rear of the train.

Max stood still, stunned. He had to check it wasn’t a mirage he was seeing. He shouted, “Heidi, Joe, Daisy, Otto!” just to be certain. At that moment, sixteen legs bounded towards him. Max leaped in the air and when he landed the dogs were upon him showering him with licks. Eventually he got up off the sand and wiped the drool off his face.

He checked his watch – two hours left. Still time to get the dogs back to Aunty’s, feed them up, and shut the gate. Then he would go home and tell his mum. Hopefully, their safe return would be enough to get him out of the dogbox.