The return of a lost dog is a story to warm your heart this cold weekend - Ian McMillan

It was many years ago in the old South Yorkshire coalfield when the young Ian McMillan and his mam and dad greeted Uncle Jimmy on his annual trip from Scotland; every year he came to go fishing with my dad and my Uncle Jack and they would disappear for whole days, fortified by sandwiches and flasks and, in Uncle Jack’s case, some raw eggs that he could fortify with brandy.

On the first day of Jimmy’s trip they drove to Wintersett Reservoir near Ryhill, not far from Hemsworth. Uncle Jack reckoned there was a pike in there ‘as big as a Zeppelin’ and they were all determined to catch it.

An addition to the crew was Jimmy’s new dog Rover, a beautiful and excitable golden retriever that leaped up at anybody at any occasion and who, when they got to Wintersett, sat excitedly (if you can sit excitedly: this dog could) until later in the morning when Jimmy, fishless, took him for a walk while Uncle Jack cracked an egg into a Sheffield Wednesday mug.

And then, perhaps because the lead wasn’t secure enough or perhaps because Uncle Jimmy’s mind was on the giant pike, Rover slipped away into the undergrowth and for a moment Jimmy didn’t notice and then he did and he started shouting the dog and plunging into the thickets of trees.

My dad and Uncle Jack joined in and spent the rest of the day searching for the lost dog. Passers-by and some other fishermen joined in the hunt and although I wasn’t there I can imagine it being like something out of a film, with frantic people plunging into undergrowth and shouting ‘Rover!’ ‘Rover!’ and a dog barking somewhere that turned out not to be Rover.

When it got dark they came home and then they set off again early the next morning to plunge into the undergrowth again and shout more loudly, but to no avail. Two more days of plunging and shouting proved fruitless, and then Uncle Jimmy had to go back home to Scotland for work and my mam and dad and my brother and me sat quietly and I put away the dog biscuits. Jimmy promised he'd be back at the weekend.

The next morning I went to school with a heavy heart and wrote about the loss of the dog in the journal we kept in out English lessons. I was never any good at maths but thinking about the dog meant that my compound fractions collapsed and Mr Smith told me to ‘put my head back in the bucket’.

And then, when I walked home from school I saw that my neighbours Mrs Page and Mrs Marsden were gathered by our front gate and they were smiling and laughing. And pointing at something on our front garden. And of course, you’ve guessed, it was Rover.

Tired, thin, bedraggled, but still Rover. Darfield to Wintersett Reservoir is nine miles, and the truly amazing thing is that Rover had only been in our house for a few hours the night before the fishing trip and yet somehow he found his way to our house. And he lived to a ripe old age!

Rover’s Return, eh? That’s the cockles of your heart warmed.