6
Most farmers are not cold-hearted butchers. They often have a deep respect for their animals and treat them with dignity and compassion. Sometimes they develop a soft spot for the underdog. No dog could be more ‘under’ than Socket. He became the special companion of Cliff and Anne, who farmed deer at Manawahe.
One morning, Cliff felt a cold, wet nuzzling on his leg. There was a familiar quiet panting sound. Cliff turned quickly and there stood Socket. The young dog looked a bit skinny on it and he shook with a mixture of emotion and cold. So would you if you’d been lost for weeks in the rugged Manawahe hills and broken gullies around Matata, and God knows where else. And you couldn’t see to save yourself.
Socket was blind. He had lost his sight not long after coming into the world when his mother, in one of those mysterious acts of miswired animal motherhood, blinded him with her claws. He was the runt of the litter. Anne and Cliff, who farmed in the vertiginous hills and plunging amphitheatres of the uplands that climb beyond the Pacific Ocean north of Whakatane, felt compassion for the blind puppy. He was named, appropriately, Socket.
More than that, they detected a rare plucky spirit in the little dog as he groped around in his darkened world. In no time Socket became a much-loved pet. He barked, he played, he slept at his owners’ feet. He went for walks with them around the farm. He just couldn’t see. In some ways Anne and Cliff were Socket’s eyes and a fierce bond developed. But Socket developed his own, compensatory radar – heightened smell and sound sensors that enabled him to wander off occasionally, but never far enough to lose the familiar smells and sounds of home.
Guests and visiting family marvelled at Socket’s often boisterous friendliness despite his handicap. He was a good, faithful dog. He just couldn’t see. The fear that one day he might get lost in the lonely, intimidating landscape was expressed occasionally, but he seemed to have a GPS unit transplanted into his brain. He was very much grounded and seemed wisely aware of his limitations.
So when he did go missing, you had to consider unnatural acts like dog-napping or worse. A dog answering his description was seen wandering down State Highway 2 by a woman at a motor camp. If that was Socket, he was miles off course. The hills echoed as his owners patrolled daily in ever-widening circles, calling his name. Days passed. If anything the patrols intensified. Socket’s absence had left a huge hole.
Once Cliff detected rustling in the undergrowth, but it was just a wild boar scuttling off. The echoes of locals calling out Socket’s name continued. After all, his hearing was about as acute as any dog’s could be. The calls became desperate before trailing away, as the days passed and the horrible realisation that Socket was gone for good sank in.
When Socket finally reappeared several weeks later, Cliff described the experience as a bit like seeing a departed loved one suddenly appearing at the door. A sense of unreality descended for a moment or two before Cliff yelled out wildly to Anne and Socket barked his head off. The chances of a blind dog making it back home in such a rugged and isolated locality were unlikely enough for the local rag – the Whakatane Beacon – to run an extended story on the saga. He became a local legend and a source of speculation and mystery. At one level it was the story of a dog’s triumph over tribulation, at another it was tangible evidence of the unique bond between dogs and humans. Socket had a home to go to – and much-loved minders. That would get a dog’s compromised radar screen operating on all cylinders. That would keep a dog searching for a way back.
At another level altogether was the mystery surrounding Socket’s travels and travails. Getting lost was easy enough. Tracing a trail back home, for a blind young dog, smacked of the miraculous. Cats have nine lives. It’s not known how many dogs have, but you figure that Socket used up a few while clambering over rocks and logs, climbing cliffs and outcrops and swimming swollen streams.
But then again, he could have come home in a taxi for all anyone knew. He was made a tremendous fuss of for a few days. Locals and family came calling just to see him and celebrate his special feat.
Today, as Socket settles down in his basket for the night, overlooking the serrated hills shelving down towards the ocean, the setting sun daubs the sky with the sort of sunset that makes you think twice about the notion of a Godless world.
You figure that Socket may have developed a God-given sixth sense. You feel that Socket can actually see or at least sense the beauty of the sky, the shadowed hills and white-capped ocean. Nine lives, sixth sense. Numbers dissolve into insignificance. Socket sighs and falls asleep (with one eye open, or his sixth sense set on ‘low’?) while Anne and Cliff catch up on sleep lost while he was at large in the wide world.