Ziggy (4 page)

Ziggy was sure he was going the right way. He could just feel it in his bones. He was tired — but he had to keep moving. Every time he stopped somewhere, people shouted at him or tried to catch him. Once, he thought he heard a familiar voice call his name. He stopped in his tracks and listened, sniffing the air. Every one of his whiskers quivered as he sniffed and listened and looked around. There it was again, a faint voice, calling his name. It was the nice lady! Ziggy dashed toward the voice. He ran as fast as he could and soon he smelled her, too. She had walked on this ground only moments earlier. And then he could see her. Oh, joy! She had her back to him, but in a moment she would turn and smile at him and
call his name, and he would run to her and she would pick him up and take him home to that place he remembered.

But the lady did not turn around. Instead, she climbed into her big house on wheels — Ziggy remembered riding in that — and the house moved down the road. Ziggy chased it, barking, but it did not hear him. It just ran off, much too fast for him to ever catch it.

“Don’t worry,” Rosie had told Charles. But how could he
stop
worrying? All he could think about was Ziggy and where he might be and whether he was scared, or hungry, and how they were ever, ever going to find him. And even though Rosie kept saying that everything would work out all right, Charles was pretty sure that she was worrying, too. How could anyone
not
worry about a little puppy out there in the big world all by himself?

At school the next day, Charles reported the
latest Ziggy news during morning meeting. All the other kids reported on what they’d been doing, too. Everybody had been putting up posters, talking to people, and handing out flyers. It made Charles feel a little better to hear that his friends were out searching for Ziggy, too.

But as the day went on, Charles couldn’t concentrate on anything but Ziggy. He got six words wrong on his spelling quiz because he wasn’t paying attention. He could not remember his three-times table. And he totally messed up his oral report on otters.

Nobody else seemed to be paying attention to their lessons, either. Finally, Mr. Mason pulled out the neighborhood map the class had made the day before. “Let’s get back to our Find Ziggy project, shall we?” he asked.

He had Charles tell him all the places where Ziggy had been sighted, and he stuck red
pushpins in all those spots. Charles sat at his desk with his chin on one hand, remembering how frustrating it had been to arrive too late every time. What good was it to replay the whole thing in his mind?

“Hmmm, that’s interesting,” said Mr. Mason. “It almost looks as if the pins are in a pattern.”

Charles sat up and took a closer look at the map. Mr. Mason was right. The pins started on one side of the map and meandered toward the other, from right to left, east to west. West. Toward West Springfield, the town where Rosie lived, across the bridge. Charles remembered that he and Aunt Amanda had gone over that bridge the day they had picked up Ziggy. He jumped up. “I think Ziggy’s trying to find his way home,” he said. “He’s trying to get back to Rosie’s.” He told Mr. Mason where Rosie lived.

Mr. Mason nodded slowly as he examined the map. “You might be right,” he said. “And it would
not be that surprising. There are lots of stories about lost dogs finding their way home, even over a distance of hundreds of miles. Nobody knows exactly how they manage to do it, but they do.”

Charles called Rosie as soon as he got home from school. “Maybe we should set a humane trap near your house, too,” he told her. “In case Ziggy comes back when you’re not around.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” said Rosie.

Charles thought she sounded tired. “Any more Ziggy sightings today?” he asked.

“I almost hate to tell you,” said Rosie. “Somebody called me to say that Ziggy had been caught in that trap we set for him. I zoomed over there as fast as I could, but by the time I got there, another person had come along and let him out.”

“What?” Charles couldn’t believe his ears. “Why would they do that?”

Rosie gave a short laugh. “I think they felt sorry for the poor dog and wanted to set him free,” she said. “Next time I’ll remember to attach one of our flyers to the humane trap so people understand what it’s there for.”

It made Charles feel a little better to know that Rosie made mistakes, too. He was just about to tell her not to worry, they would try again and catch Ziggy for real the next time, when Mom came over, waving her cell phone.

“Hold on,” Charles told Rosie. “What is it?” he asked Mom.

“Somebody caught Ziggy,” she said. “It’s him, I’m sure. They gave me a perfect description. They’re driving over with him now.”

Charles grinned at her. Mom seemed just as excited as he was. “That’s great,” he said. He spoke into the phone again. “Rosie? Did you hear that?” he asked.

“I’m on my way,” Rosie said, and hung up.

A few minutes later, a little blue car pulled up in front of the Petersons’ house. Charles looked out the window in the front door. Were these the people with Ziggy? He decided to wait until he saw that Ziggy was safely clipped to a leash before he ran out to meet them. He had learned his lesson. He did not want to scare Ziggy off.

Charles watched and waited. Yes! There, in the backseat, was a small black and tan puppy, poking his sharp little nose up to look out the window. It was Ziggy, all right. Charles would have recognized those eyes anywhere. It looked as if he had a collar on, with a red leash clipped to it. Then, just as a woman got out of the passenger side of the car and opened its back door, Lizzie came downstairs from her room and joined Charles at the window.

“What’s going on?” she asked. Then she must have spied the little dog. “Hey, is that Ziggy?”

Before Charles could stop her, she opened the door and ran out, slamming it behind her. “Ziggy!” she shouted.

And Ziggy took off, dragging his red leash behind him.

Ziggy couldn’t believe it. After all the time he had put into trying to find his way home, there he was, back where he had started when he first dug under the fence. Not that it was a bad place. In fact, it was pretty good compared to sleeping under a bush and eating garbage. He had liked the other puppy who lived at this place, and the boy and the little person were kind. Still, it wasn’t home. By this time, Ziggy really, really wanted to be home. But with this leash attached, what could he do? He got out of the car and began to walk toward the house. That was when the door slammed and a person yelled his name and galloped toward him. Not again. Ziggy was tired of being chased. But
his fear overcame his exhaustion, and once again, Ziggy ran.

“Oops,” said Lizzie. She put her hand over her mouth and stared down the street toward where Ziggy had run. “That was dumb. I can’t believe I did that, especially after hearing what happened when
you
did it.”

Charles had followed Lizzie outside. He glared at her. Then he sighed and shook his head. “I know how it is,” he said. “I got excited when I saw him the first time, too. Don’t worry. I’ll find him, and I’ll catch him. I know what to do.” He ran to the kitchen, grabbed two hot dogs out of the fridge, put them into a plastic bag, and shoved the bag into his pocket. He buckled on his helmet and headed for the garage to get his bike.

Lizzie must have told Mom what happened, because before Charles could leave Mom ran out after him. “Here, take this.” She handed him her
cell phone. “We’ll stay here in case somebody calls in a sighting on the other phone.”

Charles did not stop to wonder which way to go. First of all, he had seen Ziggy run up the street toward the Schneiders’ house. Second, he knew from looking at the pins on the map at school that Ziggy was most likely heading west again, trying to find his way back to Rosie’s. Charles pedaled as hard as he could until his legs burned and he could hardly catch his breath. He checked every yard as he rode past the familiar houses of his neighborhood. He strained his eyes for even a glimpse of black and tan, but he did not see Ziggy anywhere.

“How far could he get in such a short time?” Charles said to himself as he coasted down the hill past the Hartmullers’ low one-story house, surrounded by apple and plum trees and rosebushes. Mom said Uncle Henry, as everyone called him, had a real green thumb.

“Ziggy, where are you?” Charles sang out as he ground on the pedals, making his way slowly back up the hill, past the DeZagos', where the swimming pool lay covered for the winter. He peered into the Crables’ garage and up the stone stairs that wound through a blanket of ivy to the Dodsons’ house.

Ziggy was nowhere in sight.

Then Charles rode over the top of the hill, where the Conklins’ house sat, with its view of the woods and the stream. If Ziggy had gone into the woods, it might take forever to find him. Charles remembered when he and David had tried to catch Lucky, that stray dog who had been living in the woods behind David’s house. It had taken days.

But then … there he was. Ziggy stood in the doorway of the Conklins’ barn, sniffing at the dark inside, where thirteen chickens lived. They laid the eggs Charles often ate for breakfast. Ziggy’s
back was to Charles, and his rear legs quivered with curiosity as he stared inside the barn. Charles thought Ziggy had probably never smelled chickens before.

Slowly, quietly, Charles got off his bike and laid it on the ground. He stuck a hand into his pocket and pulled out a hot dog. He took a few silent steps closer to Ziggy, then sat down on the ground. He knew just what to do now. He broke off a piece of hot dog and tossed it gently in Ziggy’s direction.

Ziggy must have heard the soft noise of the hot dog piece plopping into the dirt behind him. He turned around quickly. Charles stayed very, very still. Aunt Amanda had once told him that dogs did not see nearly as well as they smelled, and that mostly what caught their attention was movement.

Sure enough, Ziggy did not seem startled, even when his eyes met Charles’s. Maybe he was so
hungry that the smell of hot dog was all he could think about. He sniffed and sniffed again. Then he took a few quick steps forward, dragging his red leash behind him, and snatched the hot dog piece. He gobbled it up.

Slowly, slowly, Charles raised his hand and tossed another piece so that it landed a little closer to his own knee. Ziggy took a few more steps and grabbed the food. “Good boy,” Charles whispered softly. He threw another piece, and another, and Ziggy found them and chomped them. In another minute, Ziggy was almost close enough to touch. But Charles waited patiently. The last thing he wanted to do was scare Ziggy off now.

Slowly, Charles pulled the other hot dog out of his pocket. He held his breath as he put it on the ground right in front of him. A whole hot dog. That would take Ziggy more than a second to eat.

Ziggy inched his way over to the hot dog, keeping an eye on Charles. Then he took one step closer and caught up the hot dog in his mouth.

Quick as a flash, Charles reached out and grabbed Ziggy’s collar. In another second, he held the red leash in his hands. “Gotcha,” he said very quietly.

Ziggy finished eating the hot dog and looked up at Charles. Then he rolled over onto his back and waved his paws in the air.

I surrender! You caught me. Can I go home now?

Charles heard a car drive up behind him. He stood, holding Ziggy’s leash, and turned around to see Rosie’s van pulling into the Conklins’ driveway. He could see her face through the windshield. Rosie was crying.

She stepped out of the van and came over to kneel in front of Ziggy. “You found him,” she said to Charles. “You found my boy.” She scooped Ziggy
into her arms and kissed him. She hugged him. She nuzzled his face with her chin. And the whole time, tears streamed down her cheeks. “I will never let you out of my sight again,” Charles heard her say to Ziggy.

“You mean —?” Charles began.

Rosie nodded. “I’m keeping this boy. I missed him so much when he was gone that I knew I could never let someone else have him. My husband will just have to get used to eleven dachshunds. Maybe we’ll put an addition on the house.”

Charles smiled and reached out to pat Ziggy’s head. He knew that Rosie’s place was the perfect home for the pup. “I know he’ll be happy to be home with you,” he said. “That’s all he wanted, the whole time he was out there. He just wanted to be home.”

What should you do if
you
lose your pet? It can be scary and sad if your pet runs away or gets lost. But taking action, the way Charles did, can make you feel better — and can help find your pet! There is a lot of information on the Internet about finding lost pets. But the most important things are:

1) Spread the information. Tell everyone from the police to workers at the park that your dog is lost. Make flyers and posters that tell people what your pet looks like and where to call if he’s seen.

2) Keep looking! It’s easy to get discouraged if you don’t find your pet right away. But stick with it, and with luck your pet will be found.

Dear Reader,

When I was a little girl, my very first pet was a beautiful tortoiseshell kitten named Jenny. When she didn’t come home for two days, I was very upset. I put up signs all over the neighborhood. I still have one! It says:

LOST: A tortoiseshell kitten named Jenny with a small white stripe on the side of her neck. With four black and one white paws. If found, I will be greatly relieved and happy. 20$$ reward. Thank you. Sincerely, Ellen Miles.

I was lucky: Jenny did come home and we had many happy years together after that.

Yours from the Puppy Place, Ellen Miles

P.S. To read about another energetic little pup, check out RASCAL.