My vote definitely goes to Checkers
Man, man, man; dachshund; man, man, man. On my daily drive between here and there, that’s how the order of the billboards vying for my attention goes. On my way back, it does the reverse.
Most of the billboards look the same: men hoping for votes and sharing quotes.
‘‘Nomore spin,’’ says one, while another says something about rates, just like they all did three years ago.
Anyway, the one billboard that isn’t about a man is about a dog named Checkers.
He’s a dachshund, otherwise known as a sausage dog, and he went missing months ago.
Of all the hopeful billboards, it is of course Checkers’ that gets my notice; lost pet signs always do.
Those signs are everywhere in my neighbourhood: taped on shop windows, tied on power poles and pinned on notice boards.
But while other pets have little signs or sometimes posters, Checkers has billboards which I’ve been seeing around for ages. One of them has become a sort of punctuation at a particular point in the morning drive: ‘‘I wonder if Checkers has been found yet?’’ we say groggily as we approach the spot, then ‘‘Awwww’’ when the sign is still there.
Checkers’ hoardings are given a wide berth by the other ones.
On various high-profile spots, the hopefuls’ pictures jostle with each other, cut-off shoulder to cut-off shoulder, but they all give Checkers a decent bit of space. None of them are campaigning on dogs.
Some of the men’s signs have a digit on them – always No 1 – but Checkers’ billboards have heaps of numbers.
The $2000 is for information leading to his recovery and the $4000 is for his safe return.
The other numbers are those of a toll-free phone line you can call 24 hours a day, although nobody answered when I called it this morning.
It’s a terrible thing when an animal goes missing; an experience I’ve always thought that may well be worse than when one dies.
Grief is grief but not knowing is hell, and hope can be terribly cruel.
I’ve had pets go missing, the most notable episode involving a cockatoo that flew away after getting a fright.
He could say only one word, but fortunately that word was his name, so when I rang the SPCA they said yes, they did indeed have something there saying it was Casper.
Later, the man who found him described how he was walking by the river when the bird landed on his shoulder.
‘‘Holy s...’’, said the man. ‘‘Casper,’’ said Casper.
Casper was gone for a night, but Checkers went missing in Wainuiomata on May 13 and was last sighted nearly a month later.
In the early days of the little dog’s disappearance, hundreds of people scoured the streets for him; grid searches were conducted and CCTV footage was checked.
People donated nearly $6000 to help with paying for things like trail cams, drones and a helicopter, as well as tracking dogs and humane traps.
Latterly, a pet psychic has said Checkers is healthy, is living in a burrow or similar and is mainly out at night.
It’s been nearly five months, but people haven’t given up.
On social media they ask for updates and post messages like ‘‘I hope he’ll be found’’, ‘‘I hope he’s safe’’ and ‘‘I’m hoping for the best’’.
They’re the same sort of things I think every morning when I drive past that line of billboards; all made by hopefuls but only one making me feel any real hope at all.