Mysterious hero

Mum could not believe her eyes!

It had been hammering down with rain all night, there were rivers of water running down the street and yet Dad was standing there, as he did every Sunday, kitted out in his running gear for his weekly attempt at keeping fir.

“Are you mad?” asked Mum.

“Not good to miss a week” Replied Dad. “Besides, the rain has just about stopped!”

And off he set.

Annabelle raised her eyebrows, as that was what Mum had just done. Robbie didn’t notice as he was busy seeing how many spaghetti hoops he could get on the prong of a fork.

Dad took his usual route. Along the road, through the park, over the bridge, through the wood, back up another couple of streets and home.

All was fine although Dad secretly thought that Mum was probably right, as his socks were particularly wet and seemed to weigh twice as much as usual.

When Dad reached the woods, his usual path was more like a stream.

He decided to aim his feet at the small dry areas towards the very edge of the path,

This was slow going, but the idea seemed to be working.

In hindsight, this was not great thinking from Dad as there was quite a slope down from the path to some thorny, shrubbery below.

Suddenly, Dad’s foot hit an area on the edge of the path that completely gave way beneath him.

Dad had no chance to correct his footing and with an ungainly stumble and a loud curse, he tumbled down the slope and landed with a thud in a particularly thorny bush.

Dad picked himself up, checked that he was not seriously hurt and picked a few thorns carefully from his bottom.

Dad tried to climb back up the slope to the path.

But the slope was like a greasy pole. Every time he got a little way up, his footing would go and he would end up at the bottom in the same bush.

Dad scratched his head which hurt quite a lot as he had a thorn that he hadn't noticed attached to his finger nail. He couldn’t climb back up the slope and couldn’t go sideways as the bushes were too thick.

Dad had no reception on his phone because of the trees. Suddenly, he heard the pant of a dog next to him.

He looked down and indeed there was a dog standing next to him.

Wondering where on earth the dog had come from, Dad bent down to look at is collar.

The dog leapt up, whipped the cap from Dad’s head, scurried up the slope and disappeared out of site.

Dad could not believe his bad luck. He had another couple of failed attempts to climb the slope and finally slumped to the ground in exhaustion.

Meanwhile, back at the house. Mum was hanging up washing on the line whilst Annabelle tried to take up knitting and Robbie made a funny looking Lego monster.

As Mum hanged out Robbie’s school shirt, a dog leapt the garden gate and jumped up at Mum barking furiously.

Mum was initially livid as the dog left dirty footprints on Robbie’s school shirt. But then Mum noticed that the dog had dropped Dad’s cap at her feet.

The continual barking and the dog nudging her leg made Mum feel uneasy.

She gathered up Annabelle and Robbie and decided to see if the dog would lead them anywhere.

The dog went at a fair pace but Mum, Annabelle and Robbie on his scooter managed to keep up just about.

The dog led them to the exact spot where Dad had fallen.

Mum dispatched Robbie on his scooter to ask their neighbour Mr Barclay to come to the wood with a rope.

Robbie was super fast.

Mr Barclay had just the thing. He quickly made his way to the wood with a rope, tied it to a tree and Dad managed to climb up the slope.

When Dad was safe, they all turned around to congratulate the dog.

But the dog was nowhere to be seen!

Later that evening, Robbie asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.

“ Who was that dog and how did he know where we lived?”

Nobody had the answer and despite keeping heir eyes peeled, there was no sign that week of this mysterious, canine hero.

© Chris White