They eyeballed each other from 10 paces. They sensed a connection but were unsure. After all it's been five years; a whole five years. 'She's eyeing him differently,” says one observer.

Then Jazz takes a few tentative steps towards Michael Sykes. Everyone's watching, everyone's anxious and hoping. 'Yeah, that's her,” says Michael.

Then Jazz breaks into a trot and launches at Michael. Her front paws connect at the chest, she's at full, adoring stretch and licking him to a sheen.

These were the emotion-charged scenes at the Te Puke dog pound where Rotorua builder and pig hunter Michael is reunited with his 'beautiful Jazz” – a yellow kelpie/greyhound cross – after five long years.

'Amazing eh bro? I can't get over it.”

Michael's rubbing Jazz's ears and slapping her rump. Jazz is snuffling, fussing and licking anything within tongue range. Five years man and dog have been separated. Five long years.

'It's like being reunited with your brothers and sisters who've lived in Australia all that time,” says Michael. Does it feel that good? 'Well she is important. Jazz is a pig dog, she fed the family.”

Michael is one of those delightfully stoic Kiwi blokes whose half-smile is one for every moment and every purpose. If he's feeling the love, he doesn't show it. But he talks the love.

'There's a special bond between a hunter and his dogs. You like to replay them for the joy you get out of hunting. Of course I owe her.”

Michael recalls the day she went missing. Jazz and her mother disappeared into a gorge after a big pig. He found the mother six weeks later.

'She had been badly ripped up by the pig. Jazz was a lot tougher on the pigs so I presumed she had also been injured and hadn't made it.”

Michael went back to the gorge every day for two weeks searching and calling. 'We spent hours and hours, day after day.” The hunter was trying to repay his dog. But nothing.

There's a couple of other key players in this man-and-dog reunion story.

'It's good to have people like you who love your job.” Michael is talking to Melissa Murton and Betty Hall – who are animal service officers at Western Bay of Plenty District Council. 'You just about made me cry.”

Melissa and Betty helped choreograph this wonderful moment.

And here's the secret – '982 000 163 718 262” – the 15-digit encrypted key to unravelling the five-year mystery of whatever happened to Jazz.

A call comes into the animal service officers. A dog is reported roaming in the Pyes Pa area. They set a dog trap. They snare a dog. They snare Jazz.

Except Jazz was now ‘Blue' and living in the Kaimai Ranges. Jazz had been found in the bush, taken home and started a new life with a new owner.

'She had been cared for,” says Melissa. 'But obviously not cared for enough because she was roaming.”

But good can come of bad. When Melissa ran her handset over Jazz's neck, up comes that microchip number 982 000 163 718 262. It doesn't co-relate to anything on the local register, but then 'eureka” on the national register. Jazz, aka Blue, and now Jazz again comes from Rotorua and went missing in 2011. There's a contact name and a phone number.

And those details don't match up with the story told them by the new owner in the Kaimais. But Michael's story does match up.

'I thought they were having me on. It's a good feeling, a good story bro,” says Michael.

'The new carer was reminded that keeping Jazz wasn't very nice. There could have been serious consequences,” says Melissa. Anyone who finds a dog has 72 hours to find the owner or hand it over to the authorities. And it became Melissa's responsibility to return Jazz to her rightful owner.

There's serious re-bonding going on already. As The Weekend Sun is talking to Michael, Jazz is curled up at, and on, his feet. She won't let him out of her sight this time.

When Michael told his Rotorua mates he was off to Te Puke to pick up Jazz they were sceptical. 'You are dreaming bro,” they told him.

He wasn't dreaming. Now Jazz is back in Rotorua, back home, chilling out and bonding with Michael. 'We will see if she wants to be a hunting dog or a house dog.”

Jazz's mother was the best hunting dog Michael had owned. 'Perhaps her daughter has that gene. We will see.”

The reunion is made even more poignant by the passing of Jazz's mother. 'She died last year so it's lovely to have her daughter round.”

As for Betty and Melissa, the animal services officers, it's also a special moment.

'We have a tough job to do and not all outcomes are as rewarding as this” says Betty. 'But we love microchips. They rock.”

No argument from Michael or Jazz.