Buster's Diaries: The True Story of a Dog and His Man (3 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I was not allowed into his mother’s house until he had been inside and hidden all Sally’s food. Although the Man’s mother
is a vegetarian, she says it would be wrong to force her prejudices on a dog, so she buys chicken to give to Sally. I think
his mother is right, but he thinks her behavior is very funny. He believes in forcing his prejudices on people—particularly
me. He shouts, “Wait!… Quiet!… Sit down!” all the time.

His mother sat in a big armchair with two cushions behind her, and Sally on the cushions. If Sally interrupted her by whining,
his mother elbowed her off the cushion before continuing her stories about other people’s cruelty to dogs. From the front
it looked like Long John Silver and his parrot, not the Man’s mother and the ugliest bitch you’ve ever seen. I sat next to
the little table with the tea tray on it and looked winning by putting my head on one side. It did the trick at once. “Can
I give him a piece of cake?” his mother asked. “No,” he said. “Buster doesn’t eat cake and he doesn’t eat at the table.”

“It’s not at the table,” his mother said. “And cake is good for him.” Then they began to argue about what is
good for me. I was terribly embarrassed. But Sally—no doubt used to that sort of thing—seemed not to mind. “I had dogs before
you were born,” the Man’s mother said. “And killed them with rich food,” he replied. He was making an unkind reference to
Magnus—a Yorkshire terrier with a pedigree and long name—who died young of a heart attack. The Man says it was the cake that
killed him. I put it down to the inbreeding.

We have come to inspect a house which he is having renovated. There are workmen everywhere and the Man says they are not even
trying to get the job done on time. I am sure he is right. As soon as I try to help, they stop working—especially if they
are bending down.

Outside the house there are fields and in the fields there are animals I have never seen before, called sheep and cows. Although
the cows are bigger than the sheep, they are just as stupid. When I walk towards them, they run away. If they just stood there,
I’d have a sniff and wander on. But when they turn
their backs and run, the wolf in me takes over and I think that I am chasing my dinner through the primeval forest. The Man
said, “This is going to be a problem.” But I think it will be more of a problem for the cows and sheep than for me.