Monday 3rd December
7:50am
Knock. Knock. Knock. I ran to unlock the door for my friend, Alison. Yawn. It was far too early to leave the house, but just like every other morning, since September last year, I began the 45 minute walk. Sometimes in the middle of winter it would still be dark when I left the house. Fortunately that wasn’t the case this morning. I fumbled around trying to find the correct pair of keys.
“Morning!” I greeted Alison as I opened the door at last.
“Morning.” She replied. We began to speak about homework and various other things.

8:00
Ten minutes later we arrived at Matt’s house. We hopped over the pathetic little chain that separated the park from the row of houses opposite it.
“Haley!” Alison waved towards a small figure that was heading towards us. “She’s not in school uniform… I swear the school trip isn’t until Wednesday?”
“You’re right… Why doesn’t she have uniform?” I tugged at my skirt – short as always – and adjusted my clip-on tie.
“Hey guys – I’m so glad I saw you! Now I don’t have to knock on Sally’s door all by myself.” Sally was the next person in our chain of walking people and, quite annoyingly, she had managed to fall out with Alison, Haley and Josie. Josie was at a Choir thing so she wasn’t here to pick up Sally with Haley while me and Alison picked up Matt.
“Yeah. But why aren’t you in uniform?” Alison asked.
“Oh, I’ve been selected for the non-smoking campaign thing – I’m leaving on a coach as soon as I get to school.”
“Ohhhhhh…. Of course. I had forgotten about that.” I replied.
“Oh! We’ve got to get Matt!” Alison suddenly remembered. She left me and Haley to chat while she ran towards the boy’s house.

8:15
After picking up Sally we waited for Kate at the end of her road. Matt was talking to Sally and Haley was talking to Alison. I eagerly awaited Kate’s arrival, my fellow observer of the fallout, or as we liked to call it, “The Dodecahedron of Hate”. We had even given it a theme song.
“Hey! Is that a white rabbit or is it just a plastic bag?” Alison said whilst pointing to a white blob that kept on moving in the distance. Wow, that girl has some good eyesight. I strained my eyes trying to make out the shape of the white blob. Then I heard the small yap that came from the same direction. Was it a dog? Alison and Sally ran over to the possible dog.
“It’s a dog! It’s a dog!” They cried to the rest of us. By this time my dodecahedron friend had joined us. We all ran over to the dog.
“Awww… It’s a Chihuahua!”
“How cute.”
“He’s shivering!”
“Awww… I can’t see his owner!” Various shouts erupted from the gaggle of girls plus Matt and another boy whose name escapes me. We stroked the little dog that seemed friendly enough. His little body was so cold and tiny! Such a sweet little thing! Normally I hated little dogs but there was something different about this one.
“Do you think he’s lost?” I asked the various people surrounding me. The size of our crowd had grown. There were replies of yeses and various explanations why.
“Ummm… Kate could you go get your mum?” She ran off with quite a few other people. I bent down once again to get a closer look at the dog. He put his two front paws on my lap and licked the tip of my nose. Awww… So adorable! The dog ran towards the road.
“Whoa! Stop there little one.” Matt swiftly bent down and plucked the little dog off the ground.
“Matt, you might hurt him! Or he might not like being picked up and he might bite you!” Sally said. The dog looked very happy at being picked up though.

8:20
“She… Can’t… Come.” Kate wheezed. Really it wasn’t that far to run. I nodded and turned my attention to the dog. He was small and cream with little flecks of caramel brown in his fur. And his eyes! They were big, round eyes which sparkled in the sunlight, not that there was much of it, and they were the most expressive eyes I had ever seen, it was like you could tell any expression he was feeling. At that point they looked happy, pleased and very relieved. He must have been very glad that someone found him at last. Poor thing, I bet he got out of his garden at some point last night or early this morning and now he wanted to be home.
“Let’s take him to school – they can phone the vet or someone to come and pick him up.” One of the girls suggested.
“Yes – Let’s, how cool will it be to walk in to school with a dog?!”
“Okay, but there’s a guy over there who might know something. Let’s ask!” We walked over to an old man walking a dog.
“Excuse me, do you know whose dog this is? He’s been wondering around here for ages.”
“No, I haven’t seen this one before. I would take it to school if I was you – but ask any adults you see along the way.”
“Okay thank you!” We waved goodbye to the old man.

8:30
We neared the busy road near our school.
“Matt keep a tight hold on the dog - he might get ran over.” Haley advised. A horde of older boys came in front of us. They were shouting very loud. The dog’s eyes, which previously looked very content and relaxed, began to look scared but he seemed to know that with us he was safe.
“What shall we name him?” Sally chirped up.
“Darrel!”
“Freddy!”
“Sweetie!”
“David!”
“Teacup!” Various names were shouted out and each of the names were fired down by the rest of us. A girl walked past us looking at the dog.
“It’s a dog!” She stated.
“No it’s a hippo!” Haley and Kate replied.
“How about we call him Hippo?” Haley said.
“Yeah – It’s an awesome name!” Kate backed her up. And everyone agreed.

8:35
We walked into school and the two teachers at the gates gave us an odd look.
“Why do you have a dog?” The male teacher – who I didn’t know – asked.
“We found him wondering around the streets on the way to school.” The two teachers looked at each other and discussed the predicament.
“Put it in the caretaker’s office. We’ll sort it out.” We slowly trudged over to the office. Sally opened the door and Matt placed the dog on the floor.
“Bye Hippo!” We left Hippo in the office and each departed to our registration rooms.

10:40
Sally dragged me out of English.
“Com’on let’s go to main reception to find out about Hippo!” We entered the quiet main reception.
“Can I help?” The receptionist asked.
“Ummm… Yes there was a dog handed in earlier – we would like to know if the owner has been found.”
“Yes the dog was picked up earlier. Turns out he had escaped last night.”
“Okay, thank you.” We walked out of the reception.
Grrrr… I didn’t even get a picture of the dog called Hippo.