A dog, a stick, a beach. A perfect day

Sunday, 9 March 2025

Mike White is a senior writer and columnist for the Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: It may have been the most wonderful beach in the world.

Of course, it didn’t feature in any glib list of the planet’s best beaches by Tripadvisor or some dipshit dime-store influencer.

But that’s because nobody asked the dog.

If they did, his top 10 would be strikingly different.

It would feature Waikanae rather than the Whitsundays, the Catlins above Copacabana.

In his 15 years, the dog has walked a million miles along the country’s fringe, chased sticks into its surf, remodelled its dunes with his paws, traipsed its sand back to the car.

In doing so, he’s little different from any other dog who leaps from a Subaru’s hatch, smells the salt, hears the surf, and sets off through a narrow track in the marram grass.

He always reaches the beach well before us, struck by the wide and spectacular expanse, troubled only by which way he should go.

So he runs to the waterline, turns to face us, settles close to the sand, and watches.

He watches for which way we head.

But more importantly, he watches to see that we are going to perform our duty.

Ritual demands we scan the high-tide line, where driftwood and jetsam jostle. Here, we must find a stick, a magnificent stick.

An adequate stick will not suffice, in the dog’s mind.

But it is only after you’ve made your selection, trekked to where he is lying in the cool sand, and hurled it hopefully into the shallows, that you know if the stick you’ve chosen is magnificent or merely mediocre.

The dog knows sticks better than anyone, and is thus the only arbiter. Questioning his judgment is pointless.

If the stick is big enough, light enough, and smooth enough, he will rise, spin, and chase, hurdling small waves and pouncing on it.

The trophy is then brought ashore in a prancing parade, his teeth clamped round its midriff, his tail high, his eyes exultant.

After sufficient triumphalism, he drops the stick, circles back to the shallows, and waits for us to fling it again.

So we do.

This is the height of joy, a thrill unrivalled.

When he is saturated and shivering, the dog is eventually able to be convinced to walk a while with us.

He falls into step, still carrying the stick, paws making small impressions in the wet sand that glisten for an instant before disappearing.

At some stage, the stick will get dropped. Dropped but not forgotten.

When we turn around, he sets off to retrieve it, down the beach a way, just out of the clutching waves.

He sees it, smells it, and bounds towards it to be reunited.

The whole show starts again.

Fling, chase, pounce, prance.

By the time we get back to the car, he’s dried off a little, a fine crust of salt appearing along his flanks.

Of course, not all beaches are equal.

Some are too stony. Some are too sloping.

Some have no room between waves and dunes.

Some have waves too fierce and dunes too steep.

Some have idiots in cars and morons on motorbikes.

Some have a paucity of sticks, or a surplus of other dogs.

But some are plain perfect.

Flat.

Variegated sand, from hard-packed dark at the wet edge, to bleached dust where the tide rarely reaches.

An ossuary of desiccated sticks to choose from.

Calm shallows to slump and cool in.

And miles, just miles and miles, of brilliant beach stretching far beyond where the dog’s old legs will carry him.

For him, it is undoubtedly about the journey, now, not the destination.

The chasing has become less exuberant, the frantic pirouetting as he waits for us to launch the stick, now only occasional.

The beach betrays the advance of arthritis, scoring on the sand between paw prints a sign of his back legs dragging a little.

But there is still no place better than the beach, in his mind.

And so it was just recently.

A leisurely road trip around the curl of the southern coast.

Side roads and gravel roads leading to gems where the forest almost touches the water.

Slim and secret trails through toetoe, where you emerge to a plane of sand and sea all the way to the horizon.

Where a solitary penguin or tussling sea lions were ignored by the dog, who has never been interested in assaulting another creature, bar cats.

He stretched out, trotting into a breeze that snaked sand towards us.

An occasional frill of foam was carried to him on an exhausted wave.

He glanced behind to make sure we were following.

And then he turned back, a vast world ahead of him, a soft and smooth path under him, a world of fresh wonder and simple bliss around him.

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