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

by Roy Hattersley

  There were torches burning in the drive outside the kitchen and I ran on between them, out into the road, past the church and round the back of a pub called the Eyre Arms. It was too dark to see the two Pyrenean mountain dogs that lived behind the fence in the garden. But I listened to them howling and howled back.

  I had been there for about ten minutes when the Man arrived. “God, Buster,” he said, “you might have been run over in the road.” He had forgotten to bring my lead so he had to tie his handkerchief in my collar. His handkerchief is shorter than my lead, so he had to walk home bending down. “I knew you’d be with those dogs,” he told me. Perhaps he is beginning to learn.

  January 3, 1996—London

  I have begun to settle down. I always expected to like it here, but at first, when I woke up in the middle of the night, I wondered if natural optimism had warped my judgment. But that was when I still thought the Man ought to let me sleep with him. Now I’ve stopped thinking about that and I only wake up in the night if somebody noisy goes past the front door and growling is necessary to drive them away.

  January 4, 1996

  Perhaps he has not learnt as much about dogs as I thought when he picked up the scent of the Pyrenean mountain dogs. He still does not realize that I don’t go out just for exercise. I go out to sniff about and put my head in holes. Sometimes he is so anxious to get me into running-about territory that he hurries me past every garbage can and crumbling wall. “What’s in a life so full of care there is no time to stand and sniff?” I ask myself.

  January 5, 1996

  Trouble on the way home from the park. All the big houses in Buckingham Gate have holes in their walls with scrapers inside them on which people used to clean their muddy boots. The holes are now used for hiding old candy papers, cookie wrappers, milk cartons and, best of all, leftover chicken. He got impatient when I wanted to make a detailed examination of a potato chrisp packet, and jerked very hard on my lead. This is not how the people at the dogs” rescue expected him to behave.

  January 10, 1996

  I had a nasty turn this morning when, for a moment, I thought that things were turning ugly No sooner had we got back from our walk than the Man went to my cupboard—which I had been led to believe contained nothing but biscuits and sawdust balls—and got out a piece of wood with wires sticking out at one end. Grabbing me by the collar he began to menace me with this strange object which he described as a brush.

  ‘You will like it, Buster,” he said, as he always does in preparation for doing something that I do not like at all. He then began to run the wire bits along my back. Naturally I struggled. But he held on and struck ineffectual blows in the direction of my tail. As always when in difficulty, She was called, and She operated the instrument whilst he held me down. To my surprise, the result was quite pleasant, not to say mildly erotic.

  “Turn it over,” the Man said—referring to the brush not to me. I am always called “him.” A softer part then rubbed along my back whilst he talked the usual guff about my coat shining. He also did it on my stomach and managed to hit my sensitive bits only once.

  January 13, 1996

  He is no longer rational about the food I find on the pavement. As soon as we got out on the street tonight, he began to go on about chicken, which he says contain bones that will get stuck in my throat and choke me to death. The fast-food restaurants were in full swing. So the Man walked about staring at the pavement a yard in front of him. He has set himself up as a dropped-chicken patrol. I still found the chicken first. I’m lower down and he has no sense of smell. Of course, he told me to “Drop it” and began to force my mouth open. He does not realize that trying to take food from between my teeth puts me in more danger than letting me chew it slowly. I naturally react by trying to swallow it down whole. This morning he got to me before I had time to gulp, forced my jaws open and pushed his fingers down my throat as though he were trying to make me sick. When he scraped out the half-masticated meat and the fragments of shattered bone, he made a noise as if he was going to be ill, and said, “Disgusting!” You would have thought I had asked him to do it.

  Then, of course, we went through the usual “Bad dog” ritual. I remained remarkably forbearing. I am instinctively opposed to having food taken out of my mouth. But all I did was hang on to what I had found and therefore was rightfully mine. He got his knuckles bruised and his thumb squashed. If I had wanted to, I could have bitten his fingers off one by one. But I didn’t. I think I am beginning to feel affectionate towards him. I must not let it come between me and garbage.

  January 15, 1996

  Where I live now, there are great smells. There were smells at the dogs” home, but I knew where they came from, and the dogs who made them thought it was their territory as well as mine. In the streets round here, the smells are all mysterious and each one has to be investigated to see if it was made by a potential intruder.

  I take each one very seriously, sniffing from its origin on wall, mail slot or lamppost all the way to where it ends at the pavement’s edge. Throughout the examination, my nose is as close to the flagstones as it is possible to be without wearing the end away. Once I have completed my investigation, I have a clear mental picture of the culprit and possible interloper. “Middle-aged bitch. Less than one foot from ground. Long-haired. Possibly dachshund. No threat.” When a threat is located, I eliminate it by urinating on the spot that the intruder has defiled. As is well known, the last dog to urinate on a spot has staked his claim to domination of the territory I am a miracle of nature, a walking DNA machine.

  January 19, 1996

  I fear I have discovered something distasteful about the Man. He collects excrement. Usually—my toilette completed—I am too busy expressing the joy of defecation to notice what’s going on. But this morning, I kicked so hard with my back feet that I swung completely round. The Man had a plastic bag on his hand like a glove and was furtively bending down over the place where I had squatted. He was picking up what I had dropped.

  He was very careful to retrieve every particle. He tied the bag in a double knot, took it to one of those cans in which delicacies are stored—old teacakes, the edges of half-eaten sandwiches and cold fries—and dropped it in. While all this was going on, I had to wait for the biscuit which is the proper reward of my incredibly regular habits.

  January 21, 1996

  Today, the excrement collection syndrome took a turn for the worse. During the early-morning walk, he tried to persuade an unknown lady to do the same—the pervert’s typical behavior pattern. When the lady refused to accept his plastic bag, the Man turned nasty and started to shout about “getting us all a bad name.” I cannot imagine why he should want that.

  I have made excrement collection as hard as possible in the hope that I can stop him doing it. Yesterday lunchtime I backed up against a chicken wire fence and in the evening I sat on a rose bush. This morning, in St James’s Park, I crawled under a giant rhododendron. But even when he hit his head on a branch, he still wouldn’t stop. I am worried in case there are more unpleasant habits yet to be revealed.

  It is hard for me to struggle against my primitive instincts if the Man—who is supposed to civilize me—behaves like something out of the Stone Age.

  January 22, 1996

  Another example of double standards! Scratching is fine for people but forbidden to dogs. The Man scratches all the time. And everywhere. But if I put my paw within an inch of my ear, they both leap on me and exact a punishment which is out of all proportion to the crime.

  The Man makes me sit between his feet, holds me round the chest with one arm and clamps my jaws shut with his free hand. Then, believe it or not, She squirts me in the ear. The squirt does not hurt, but it does feel very funny. And it is only the beginning of the torture. The Man then rubs my ear against my head, while She shouts, “Not too hard. Not too hard. The vet said do it gently.”

  When he stops rubbing, I can still feel the squirt inside my ear. So I shake my head very hard. A
lot of the squirt flies out and makes spots on the Man’s trousers. That is one thing about being squirted in the ear that I like.

  January 23, 1996—Liverpool

  Yesterday we went on our first railway journey. The Man promised me it would be exciting. I think it was more exciting than he intended.

  The first part was extremely boring. I sat under the table in the carriage of a railway train and he held onto my collar—usually with both hands. All I could see was feet. I don’t bark, but I tried to growl at some of them. He held my jaws together as soon as I gave the first rumble. When we got off the train he said, “That wasn’t bad for the first time. You’ll get to like it.” I shall never get to like having my jaws held together.

  We then walked to what is called the Adelphi Hotel. He went in through a door which, instead of opening properly, swings round in a circle. We had to walk round inside it. I was quite frightened and I would have been more frightened still if the Man had not been inside the door with me. There was not much room and he stood on my tail, but I was glad he was there.

  The Man said that I was very good in the elevator. The elevator is a very little room. When you get in it, it seems to float up in the air. I liked the floating feeling and sat very quietly in the corner. A stranger in the elevator said, “What a good dog.” So when we got to the bedroom at the end of a very long corridor, I was very pleased with myself and jumped on the bed straight away. The Man pushed me off, but not before I had sniffed his suitcase. It was stuffed full of sawdust balls and biscuits.

  Before he went out and left me all alone, the Man talked about me on the telephone. I always enjoy listening when the Man talks about me. “Buster is here,” he said. “Nobody must come in or open the door.” He then spoilt it all by adding, “He’s perfectly friendly. I’m just afraid of him running out and getting lost. He’s got a lot to learn.” I would rather be unfriendly than have a lot to learn.

  I always go to sleep when he is not there. So I do not know how long he had been gone before the lady came into the room. She was carrying towels. When I growled at her she looked very frightened. She opened the door of the little room in which he had put his suitcase and looked inside. Then she opened another door, went in and came out again without the towels. I was still growling, so she ran across the room and disappeared through the door into the corridor. She slammed the outside door behind her. But she left the other doors open.

  The bathroom only smelt of soap. The little room—smaller even than the elevator—smelt wonderful. His suitcase was open, and I could see two days” rations of sawdust balls measured out in plastic bags. There were also two packets of custard cream cookies which the hotel had left for him to have when he made himself a cup of tea. I ate the cookies first. They were only wrapped in paper. It tasted the same as the cookies.

  The bags into which he had measured the sawdust balls were thick plastic, but I tore them open one by one. It all went to prove that he starves me. I ate two extra days” rations and six custard creams (and their wrapping paper) without any difficulty. At least, there was no difficulty at first.

  Normally I sleep very peacefully. But that night in the Adelphi Hotel I dreamt that there was a great worm in my stomach and, no matter how much worm medicine the Man gave me, the worm just grew and grew until it made me burst. I was very glad when the Man came back but I felt too heavy round the middle to jump up and greet him with my usual nip at his hand, tug at his sleeve and double-pawed punch in the groin. He was, however, very cheerful. “Buster,” he said, “lying there like that, you look pregnant.” When I still did not move, he walked across to me and began to scratch my stomach. The giant worm turned into a lead ball. So I did not even roll over on my back. “God Almighty,” the Man said, kneeling down as he always does when he is worried about me. “You’ve been poisoned.” Then he noticed that the door to the little room was open and that the plastic bags were split and empty.

  I had never been out so late before. But, although my bowels were in turmoil, we walked and walked. The Adelphi Hotel is in a very noisy and dirty city so we walked through piles of litter. I did not want to eat any of it. Every time we stopped, the Man said, “Good boy. That’s the idea. We’re beginning to walk it off.” Once a youth who was passing where I was crouched down asked his friend, “Did you make that noise or was it the dog?” His friend pushed him and he pushed his friend back. The Man said, “Watch it, this is a very sensitive dog, although he may not sound it.” They all laughed. I do not know why.

  As usual, I woke up at seven o’clock feeling as fit as one of the fleas I do not have. The Man had only pushed me off the bed once. The second time I climbed on, he let me stay there. He did not wake up for a long time. I am very worried there is nothing left for me to eat for breakfast.

  January 30, 1996—London

  He has read in one of his books that the best way to intimidate me is to make a growling sound and, believe it or not, he is trying to do it. The noise he produces is pathetic. He sounds like a cross between whooping cough and a leaky bagpipe. And he can’t keep it up for more than about ten seconds. Then he chokes, splutters, wheezes and collapses into the nearest chair.

  The book recommends “an additional disciplinary technique to supplement growling.” It is equally incredible. He is supposed to ignore me when he comes home. The idea is that he walks in, I throw myself at him, and he takes absolutely no notice. If I go on throwing myself at him, he is supposed to go on not noticing until I realize that I am a dog of absolute insignificance who should not speak until he is spoken to.

  Who writes these books? Nobody who has ever owned a dog, that’s for sure. When I’m at my jumping best, I am absolutely irresistible. It is not just that I am too attractive to ignore. If he took no notice of me, I would tear his sleeve off. Dogs react best to affection.

  February 2, 1996

  The disciplinary offensive is now concentrating on jumping, which is totally unreasonable. I am a cheery chap. That is why, when I walk, my bottom moves from side to side even if my tail is not wagging. Everybody likes that and says, “Buster is a cheery chap.” It is also because I am a cheery chap that I jump up at everybody who comes into the house and most people I meet in the street. But nobody seems to like that as much as they like my bottom moving from side to side when I walk down the street. The Man says, “I know he is a bit of a handful, but he wasn’t part of a family for the first nine months.” And She tells the Man, “It’s in his own interests to teach him not to frighten people.” It is in my own interests, handful or not, to be a cheery chappy. It is also in theirs. I can’t be cheery and not jump. They’ll learn with time.

  February 15, 1996

  I have retractable ears. They are not always the advantage that they may seem to animals whose ears are entirely immobile. When they are erect in their listening mode, people always say, “Look at Buster. He can understand every word we say.” This is good, though it is not entirely true. Some words—particularly “Buster” and “breakfast”—I recognize at once, though my ears often go rigid at the sound of rustling paper in the mistaken belief that biscuits are about. However, when my ears lie flat in their hunting mode, people still say, “Look at Buster.” But they think that I am about to pounce. This is sometimes true, but not always. Sometimes my ears just go flat for no particular reason.

  February 19, 1996

  The Man has still not learnt the problems I am caused by inconsistent behavior. Normally—despite my passion for cheese—all I ever get are the crumbs which bounce off his stomach and land on the floor beneath the table. Even then he makes a lot of fuss about me not picking up the bigger bits.

  This morning, however, I was sent for and given a substantial piece of Stilton cheese. Admittedly the Man had rolled it into a ball. But I have absolutely nothing against the taste of human sweat and I gobbled it down with my usual enthusiasm. For the next two hours the Man followed me round the house. I had only to get up from the sofa or go into the kitchen for a bit of water for
him to ask me, “Do you want to go out, Buster?” I always want to go out. But I have got used to the routine of four walks a day. To be asked the question every ten minutes from ten o’clock until twelve was strangely unnerving.

  Strangely enough, instead of feeling the urge to walk at two, I was anxious for a trip to Vincent Square more than an hour earlier than usual. The Man is not normally home at lunchtime. But on what I think of as Cheese Day, he had hung around the house all day and, to my astonishment, had my lead on within thirty seconds. We almost ran out of the door. Nothing particularly unusual happened whilst we were out. But when we got back, the Man was positively triumphant. “The worm pill works exactly as it promises on the packet,” he said.

  February 20, 1996—Sheffield

  We have come to see the Man’s mother. She is very old—probably fourteen or fifteen. She thinks she knows all about dogs and goes on about Mick, Joey, Bess, Dinah and Magnus. All of them were intelligent, loyal, well behaved, etc., etc. But none of them compares with Sally.

  Sally is the ugliest bitch you’ve ever seen. She looks as if she is two half-dogs stitched together in the middle. Sally came from the RSPCA and was tortured when a puppy. The Man’s mother kept describing the terrible things that happened to her. The stories made my tail go all limp and hang between my back legs. She then asked who had tortured me before I went to the dogs” home. She thinks all rescue dogs are tortured first.