Hankley Common, it being close to home and often empty, became the walk of choice for Jemima and Jesse on those weekends that Christine deemed to share the task. All four of us would head out in the car taking the 5 minute drive towards Thursley and turning off at what was Truxford Farm. The excitement was always there for the dogs no matter how many times we walked Hankley and it was often difficult to restrain them from leaping out of the car before the door was fully open and you had extracted yourself from the seat. One particular walk became something of a nightmare scenario however. We decided to take a new route around some dense woodland beside a horse trail. It was not a route we had taken before but we had no reason to be fearful as we often tried new paths and tracks. We walked along the wide sandy horse trail and came to another dirt track heading into the wood, wide enough for a car, and we turned right into it. Jesse as usual had charged off in another direction but a quick shout was all it took to catch his attention and for him to come back. Jemima, again as per normal, was a little way behind as she sniffed her way along investigating every smell. We continued up the track on a slight incline and after a short distance we stopped and looked back. Jemima had turned into the track so we assumed she had noticed us. We turned and carried on eventually reaching the other side of the wood. Once again we stopped to check Jemima was tagging along behind. She wasn’t there.

We waited for a minute or so issuing the usual mixture of shouts for her to come. She didn’t come. I shouted louder but with no joy so we turned back down the track in the direction we had just come from eventually reaching the horse trail but with no sign of Jemima. We called some more but to no avail. It wasn’t abnormal to lose sight of Jemima or Jesse but I started to feel uneasy. We walked back up the track calling intermittently but nothing. It had been perhaps twenty minutes since we last saw her which was more unusual. I began to get those irrational premonitions that she was gone, really gone. This in turn initiated a conflict between logic and fear, between “she can’t have gone far” and “she could be anywhere by now”. Christine and I split up to cover more ground and I began to run, stopping every thirty seconds or so to call Jemimas name and to listen and scan the wood or the open valley of Hankley. Christine was doing something similar but I noticed that within a minute or two Christines voice became fainter until I couldn’t hear her calling. This made me think that perhaps the trees were acting to muffle our calls and Jemima could potentially not hear either of us. I carried on running and calling trying to cover as much ground in the vicinity as I could. I eventually half circumnavigated the wood and met Christine coming the other way. We then took off separately again in new directions. It was now around fifty minutes since we had last seen Jemima.

We found her ten minutes later. She was pottering along the track that we had turned into an hour before and she was quite unperturbed despite my distressed greeting. What I could not work out is how neither Christine or I missed her on our search. We had covered the track through the wood from both sides and ran a couple of laps around yet she was found halfway up the track from where we had first turned into it. I felt relief washing over me as we walked back to the car this time not letting Jemima out of my sight.