I LIKE DOGS in the abstract, as a class. I like dog-lovers, too, and think them superior to other men, because I admire their capacity for fellow feeling and their willingness to claim the mantle of stewardship to which all of us are called, so the Bible says. I like movies about dogs. I can watch the broadcast of the Westminster dog show for an hour at a time. That charitable organization that brings doggies to retirement homes so the elderly residents can be revivified by canine companionship–I would give money to that organization if I could remember what it is called.
In other words, as a general proposition, I am down with dogs. It’s just Buster himself–Buster en se, as the metaphysicians would put it–that I have a problem with.
The picture you see to the right is a picture of Buster. It is an idealized rendering, in my opinion. It was drawn by my daughter, Emily, who is 10 years old and rather more fond of Buster than I. We all approach works of art differently, of course, and vive la différence, but when I look at this picture I see a warm, playful, cuddly pup, a bundle of joy, a creature to lift a lowering heart and make gentle the face of the world. Then when I put the picture down and look across the room I see the real Buster. He doesn’t appear this way to me at all. Far from a joy-bundle, he is scruffy, panting, half-asleep; or, in the alternative, he is scruffy, panting, and hyperactive, heckling me with gurgles and whimpers and even outright barks until I drop whatever it is I’m doing–gathering the remains of a tissue box he’s torn apart, for example–and devote all my energies to keeping him occupied. And this is not easy. I’ve met teenage boys with longer attention spans than Buster’s.
There are many clear and rational reasons why Emily and I see Buster so differently, beyond the obvious one that she is a sweetly disposed 10-year-old girl and I am a tired, cranky, middle-aged man. Buster is not really a man’s dog. Men have hounds and setters, Dobermans and Mastiffs–fearless beasts with giant heads that burrow deep into the underbrush to roust a covey of quail, graceful beasts that swing great ropes of spittle onto a passerby as they leap for Frisbees or footballs in parks and open fields.
Buster, by contrast, neither burrows nor leaps, neither does he roust. He is a Bichon Frise–a breed, like the Pekingese, that does not seem to have any males within its genotype. Bichons were bred (by the French) to be show dogs, so it’s no surprise they sashay like fan dancers at the Folies Bergère. Every Bichon appears to be a girl dog; and every Bichon looks as if it should be owned by a girl. When I first told a friend we might buy a Bichon and sent him a picture so he could see what we were getting, his reply, by email, was swift: “Wo. I’m not sure I’d want to be seen in public with one of those, you know?”
Oh, I do know, I do. At this season our neighborhood is filled with construction crews repairing streets and renovating houses. They crack apart concrete slabs and bust up walls. When it comes time for Buster’s mid-morning walk, I descend from my home office, where my soft, pale hands have been tap-tap-tapping out my little articles, and with only the greatest reluctance do I escort fluffy Buster past these Doberman-owning fellows, these Mastiff-loving men. They stop what they’re doing and stare as we pass. I feel like one of the Gabor sisters.
The resentments pile up. Buster wasn’t an impulse buy, exactly, but in retrospect it’s plain I didn’t think things through. When we brought Buster home, late last fall, I didn’t expect, for example, that I would never again be able to sleep past six in the morning, when Buster’s internal alarm goes off, nor did I expect him to eat half a dozen books and the lining of my overcoat. I never thought I would become a student of bowel movements, of their intensity, size, and frequency, and it didn’t occur to me that I will have to write many, many more of my little articles than I would have done otherwise, just to pay bills from clinics, sitters, kennels, and Petsmart.
I have tried to keep these resentments from Emily, for the most part, and of course Buster himself doesn’t care whether I’m showering him in praise or giving him the high hat. Emily meanwhile has embarked on a writing project of her own: a series of adventure stories starring Buster. “Buster in Autumn” has been followed by “Buster in Winter.” She says she’s waiting for the seasons to be upon us before she undertakes “Buster in Spring” and “Buster in Summer.”
“‘Buster in Spring’ will be totally different from ‘Buster in Winter,'” she tells me.
“Really?” I say. “Do you think so?”
–Andrew Ferguson
