Buster's Diaries: The True Story of a Dog and His Man

by Roy Hattersley

  Unfortunately, those rooms are the places in which he spends his time when I am waiting to go out in the morning. Sometimes I think his behavior is designed to provoke me. For as soon as he wakes up, he asks me, “Want to go for a walk?” Of course I do. And I am ready. But he is not. It takes him forty-five minutes to prepare for a stroll in the park.

  At first I am perfectly happy rolling about on my back and growling aimlessly. “Joy of living,” he calls it in his sentimental way. But after about ten minutes of banging my head on the skirting board and getting carpet fluff up my nostrils, “joy of living” begins to lose its charm. And he is still not ready. A less sophisticated dog would run amok. I operate Buster’s Ratchet.

  First I lie, motionless, just outside the bedroom door. “Now Buster,” the Man says, “you know perfectly well you are not allowed in here.” Then he turns round and I wriggle two inches forward. He turns his back on me and says, “That’s a good boy. Stay there.” So I wait and then wriggle another two inches towards him. By the time he is ready, I am more inside the bedroom than out. It doesn’t make him move any more quickly, but I have won the war of wills and taken another step towards undisputed leadership status.

  November 30, 1997

  One of the many bits and pieces which came with today’s Sunday Telegraph had a picture of something called an Italian greyhound on the cover. The Italian greyhound was called Vinny and it got into the newspapers by going—or, more likely, being taken—to see a dog psychologist. Apparently Vinny is afraid of men. I found it all embarrassing, but the Man thought it very funny “Don’t look so superior, Buster,” he said. “There are those who think you are a psychotic killer.” He knows very well that, in the affair of the goose, I only did what comes naturally He just can’t avoid making sick jokes about it.

  In fact, most things Vinny did were perfectly normal. When his owner (a lady, you will not be surprised to learn) sat with her boyfriend on the sofa, he forced himself between them. In a motor car, he climbed on the driver. I guess that the “animal behav-iorist” charged for his advice. I would have told them what was wrong with Vinny for absolutely nothing. The lady owner actually boasted, “My father and Vinny have dinner together every night—that is to say, my father cuts up some of his own meat and vegetables and gives it to him.” The most elementary dog book warns against feeding dogs from your own plate. Whenever I suggest it, I get hit with a newspaper. Anybody who knows anything about dogs realizes that, if dogs eat with humans, they begin to think of humans as inferiors. Perhaps it is best to live with somebody who knows absolutely nothing about dogs.

  December 4, 1997

  We have invented a brilliant new game called “Get the pig’s ear.” The ear the Man and I chase is not attached to a pig. It was once, but the pig died and its ear was cut off and dried. It is very good to eat, but first it has to be chased round the room.

  The Man gets one out of the cupboard, waves it about and then throws it down the hall. I pounce, but I do not chew it or swallow it down. Instead, I let it drop out of my mouth and stand with it between my front paws. Although the Man is not always highly perceptive, he realizes after a little while that I am challenging him to get it back.

  Every time he moves a muscle—a pace to the right or a slight wave of the left arm—I run off with the pig’s ear. Sometimes I go into the kitchen and sometimes round the furniture in the drawing room. After a minute or so, I bring it back and challenge the Man again.

  The Man is a bad sport. He always catches me and gets the pig’s ear in the end. Then, when he has made me sit down calmly, he lets me eat it. He is trying to show who is boss, but he also proves which one of us is really stupid. “You’d make a rotten tennis player, Buster,” he tells me. “You do all the running about and I just stand here.” Why does he not understand that I am not a tennis player? I am a dog and we do not play tennis. We play get the pig’s ear.

  December 10, 1997—Derbyshire

  The central heating has broken down and the Man cannot keep the fire alight in his bedroom. He wasted most of the evening pushing bits of wood under the coal but, after a quick flare, it went out every time.

  Just before midnight, he put two more blankets on his bed. Then he put on two sweaters over his pyjamas and the socks he had just taken off. “Bedtime, Buster,” he said. I obeyed at once—as I always do. But instead of going to my night bed on the landing (next to the cold radiator), I went to my day bed in the kitchen (next to the warm stove).

  The Man was offended. “Well, thanks for standing by me,” he said. Who does he think I am? I think the decision to choose the warm bed shows I am becoming positively sophisticated. He should welcome me becoming as selfish as a human being.

  December 23, 1997—London

  Silky and I are reunited. She was back in the park this morning. At first I did not recognize her. She is at least twice as big as she was when last I saw her. And her ears are now so long that they almost reach the ground. I think her owner must have read the article in The Times about ears flapping like butterfly wings. No risk of “bacterial growth” for Silky. All the bacteria would be battered to death against the side of her head.

  Despite her new size and shape, we still have a lot in common. She has developed the dangerous habit of running about with a branch in her mouth. It mows down everybody on each side of her, like the blades on Boadicea’s chariot wheels. But she dropped it as soon as she saw me and ran at me straightaway. Both of us have retained our sense of timing. We went up on our back legs, clashed heads, fell to the ground and rolled about on the grass, all in perfect unison and just like old times. The other dogs—Lenny Cliquot and the spaniel with a piece of rope tied to its collar—all watched in envy. Silky has lost her looks, but beauty is only fur deep. It is character and companionship that really matter, not appearance. The Man knows that very well. Why else should I love him despite him talking so much nonsense?

  On the way home, he asked me, “What about Flora?” and then said, “Frailty, thy name is Buster.” I have no idea what he was talking about.

  December 25, 1997—Derbyshire

  It is our good fortune to be spending Christmas with Sally and the Man’s mother. I was not allowed into the dining room when they ate the turkey. Sally was. But a greater indignity followed. “How old did you say he was?” the Man’s mother asked. “About three,” he told her. “We guess he was born in January or February 1995.” His mother seemed doubtful. “Did they tell you that at the place you got him?” The Man told her that they did. “They saw you coming,” the Man’s mother said—whatever that may mean.

  The Man insisted that I must be three, but, thinking that his mother believed me to be younger, added, “I know he still behaves like a puppy sometimes.” I think he was remembering the young lady from Yorkshire Television who, after I tried to sit on her knee, asked the Man, “Is he weaned yet?” The Man told his mother he was glad I had not grown up, but that is not what he said to the young lady from Yorkshire Television.

  “He’s no puppy,” the Man’s mother said. “And he isn’t three either. He’s ten or eleven.” Although it was Christmas, the Man said, “Don’t be daft, Mum. You saw him two years ago. He’s almost twice the size he was when we got him.” That is not true, but I have grown. The Man’s mother was not convinced. “He’s going white under the chin. That’s a sure sign of age,” she insisted. She then went on about how sad the Man would be when he lost me in a couple of years” time. The Man tried to tell her my chin had always been white, like the patch on my chest. “It’s part of his Staffordshire inheritance,” he said. I think his mother went to sleep while he was talking about my handsome brindle coat, but I cannot be sure, because I went to sleep first. When I woke, I remembered what the Man’s mother had said. For a moment I thought that it might be true. Then I remembered that I am young and bold. I am glad. The Man couldn’t manage without me.

  December 28, 1997

  Great day. There is a picture of me on the front of the Sunday Times
News Review. It is a good picture. My ears are pricked and it is clear that I have an Alsatian’s profile. I am part of the New Year quiz. Readers have to guess my name. It must be a very easy quiz because everybody knows me. I am regularly mentioned in newspapers.

  This is the second competition in which I have featured. The first one was in the New Statesman. They reprinted the old picture of me licking the Man’s face—the one that the Evening Standard used on the day the Man was prosecuted for letting me kill the goose. Competitors had to invent a caption to put under my picture. I do not know what the winning contestant wrote. I hope it was “Good boy, Buster. Have a biscuit.”

  December 31, 1997—London

  You can’t trust David Attenborough. Before he went to bed, the Man sat me down on the sofa to watch a television show about wolves. I can’t focus on the screen— though I sometimes bark when a door bell rings in Coronation Street. So the Man promised to repeat all the interesting bits. At first it was very good: “Wolves are more familiar to us than we might imagine. All our domestic dogs are descended from them. Indeed, the very characteristics we admire most in our dogs—loyalty, intelligence and courage—are precisely the characteristics that the wolf has to have to survive.” I know I look like a young wolf—cuddly in a frightening sort of way. And I have no intention of becoming one of those scraggy, unkempt geriatrics that slink along behind the pack, waiting to pick up bits of food nobody else wants. I like eating food nobody else wants, but it is a luxury, not a necessity. And the Man brushes me—not as often as he pretends, but quite often.

  Anyway, when he told me about “loyalty, intelligence and courage,” I rolled over on my back and kicked my legs in the air—though which of the desirable characteristics that illustrated, I am not certain. Indeed I felt so happy that I began gently to chew his finger. Inevitably, he went through the whole performance. “Stop it… . Bad dog… Nobody likes teeth except Buster.… I shan’t tell you again… . You’ll go outside.” As always, when I am euphoric, I chewed on and waited to be told to go. Indeed, I could feel him stirring in preparation for my stern expulsion when the Man sank back on the sofa. “Listen to this,” he said.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked, knowing very well that I hadn’t. “He says wolves always pick on a wounded prey. Not very nice, is it?” I panted and gave my affectionate growl, hoping he would forget both about Attenborough’s libel and about turning me out of the room. “It’s right,” he said, as if he had just made a major discovery. “It’s another characteristic you’ve inherited from your primitive ancestors.”

  Epilogue

  This morning, on the train down from Derbyshire, the woman who sat across the aisle from the Man pointed at me and said, “It looks as though he has fallen on his feet.” I hadn’t fallen anywhere, I was lying quietly under the table, chewing a pig’s ear and waiting for the Man to unscrew the top from the bottle of water he had bought for me. The Man had just told her about me being an orphan and living in two dogs” homes before he adopted me. When I rolled back on my side and closed my eyes, the woman said, “He’s as good as gold.” That is, I am glad to say, a bit of an exaggeration. I still bark at people who stop the Man in the street, jump on his knee without invitation, chew his hand when he lets it dangle down beside his chair and get bad-tempered when anything distracts him from his principal duty—paying attention to me. But I have become civilized almost to the point of decadence. Two years ago, I was wild by nature and had to force myself to behave properly. Now I am domesticated and need to be reminded of the wolf that sleeps inside me. The change of character may not be particularly heroic, but it is certainly convenient. It means that almost everybody loves me.

  My greatest fans are two little girls who live near us in London. The one who is eighteen months old runs away from her mother and rings our door bell just for the pleasure of hearing me speak—even though she has to stand on tiptoe to reach the bell. I stand on tiptoe on the other side of the door and bark in my most friendly way When she looks through the mail slot, she can see my tail wagging. I can hardly believe that, a year ago, I would have wanted to drive her away.

  Her father has bought her a machine which the Man calls a virtual pet. Its name is Tamagotchi, but the little girl calls it Buster after me. I am sure that it will grow up to be very well behaved.

  I think I would have learnt more quickly if, from the very beginning, I had been brought up like the two little girls. As far as I can make out, they never lived rough in a park or got moved from orphanage to orphanage with nobody to talk to them. I only remember that it happened to me, because the Man keeps telling people about it. To be honest, I don’t remember much, unless a smell or sound reminds me. And these days all the smells and sounds are warm and comfortable.

  The End

  From the desk off

  BUSTER HATTERSLEY,

  London, England

  Dear new American friends:

  I’m known as “the most famous dog in Britain” and I still don’t quite understand it… All I did was defend myself against an overly aggressive royal goose near Buckingham Palace. Suddenly the press was hounding me. Then, after I put paw to paper to tell my side of the story, it Became a Big bestseller! I hope you’d like my “heartwarming story of triumph over adversity.” It starts at the Beginning when the Man rescues me, an orphaned crossbreed puppy, from a very rough life. Even at that tender age, I quickly learned and excelled at my canine duties. And in my diaries I reveal with reckless honesty the indignities I suffered, such as the fact that a grown human, fully dressed, has Been known to take my paws in his hands and cry, “Shall we dance? One, two, three. Look, Buster is Deborah Kerr in The King and I!” And yes, I confess everything about “the goose incident.” But what I most want to tell you about is the relationship Between me and the Man on the other end of the leash and all the secrets Between Pet and Man that even the feline/fish/feather-dependent will find fascinating!

  Love and Biscuits,

  Buster

  “Buster is… quite probably the finest canine writer to have emerged in decades.”

  —The Mail on Sunday