Buster the Fearless

As three big brown and white dogs raced toward him; my son’s young system went into shock. His hair stood on end, his pulse raced, I could see his small blue eyes darting around the garden to ascertain if rescue was imminent; it was not! I was twenty paces away. The full horror of the situation was now dawning on him; he was on his own. His eyes grew wider, and his mouth parched as the three farm dogs, bowled him over like a wooden skittle. Not only was he incidental to their garden game, but the lightness of his body meant that he was spun into the air and landed thud on the wooden deck.

At 5 years old, this garden party incident was my son’s first terrifying introduction to dogs. Dogs were not the faithful, soft, and adoring creatures of the movies. Dogs were dangerous, thoughtless, huge, and mean. From that point on, he avoided dogs at all costs. Just the thought of them would have him flushed and running in the opposite direction.

Therefore, when the conversation about getting a puppy started to ripple through in the family around Halloween a few years later, it made his hair stand up on end once again. It wasn’t even that he was much included in the conversation. It was my oldest daughter and husband who had set their heart on a Golden Retriever. For my husband, he would be revisiting his childhood of having a line of Golden Retrievers in his family. Tandy, Simba, Evulsaville, Danny, etc. all seemed to have similar names, and some had quite a prestigious lineage.

Regardless of the dad’s romantic stories of a childhood surrounded by devoted dogs, Alex would beat a hasty retreat when the topic was raised and as a quiet child, he laid low hoping that this nightmare would all go away.

The day of Buster’s arrival began normally, I was knee-deep in Halloween Party preparations for my children’s school and was cutting it fine as I loaded the last party supplies into the car. My husband was arriving home at any minute, and I had to go! So, imagine my surprise as out of the thicket of trees on the greenbelt at the end of our road, came one son, one elegant mother Golden Retriever, and one gamboling, fluffy, six-week-old puppy. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The way Alex told it. he was playing on the greenbelt with his sister when mum and pup came strolling up to him like long-lost friends. As if they had always been together. The puppy’s mother watched gently as Alex bent down to introduce himself. As the pair bonded, Alex didn’t even think about his fear of dogs, he had apparently been cured of his anxiety in less than a minute. It was truly a miracle.

Alex walked nonchalantly into our garden with the two dogs trotting behind him. I raced out of the door calling to my husband to “handle it!”. The dogs had clearly got loose from a local house and obviously needed to be returned. I even thought my daughter had played a trick on us and set this whole plan up with one of her teenage friends to get her puppy before the holidays.

A little bit of sleuthing on my husband’s part and a few hours later we were at the door of the real owner’s home, safely returning their pets. It turned out that the mother got loose from the owner’s garden all the time she was quite the adventurer, but she had never taken Buster her pup with her before. He was the last of the litter and at six weeks, he was ready for a home. Buster was now ours. We hadn’t chosen a puppy; Buster had chosen Alex.

Over the next few months Buster wove his magic and “Dogs” became second nature to Alex, they were inseparable and they spoke the same language. They played for hours in the swimming pool together, and Alex even taught Buster how to jump off the diving board.

Buster was never a normal dog as you would put it. On lazy days in the front yard, he would run off down the greenbelt, just as he had done with his mom so many years before. In short order, he would find his way to other people’s houses where they would take pity on him and take him in. Thankfully, they would always put “Lost Dog!” posters around the neighborhood. It was almost a game for him, however, wherever his adventures would take him, Buster the Fearless would always find his way back home to Alex.