Farewell Buster

6 Responses to Farewell Buster

1. Wally Dalí says:

   10 September, 2023 at 3:43 pm

   It is a nice, concise and cathartic piece from Tognini. Buster was a constant in her txitter feed, and though I’m tempted to get snooty at “rescue” people and workaholics, to all appearances she gave him everything he needed while still keeping up her daunting work ethic, and he filled a gap in her life which couldn’t be filled by a netball team, bloke, kid, cat, whatever else.
   I’m tempted to get snooty at the “rescue” meme- like First Nations and Diversity, it’s an imported U.S. concept which often occludes more than it explains. Not only is it dismissive of our millenia-old cultural habit of seeking solutions for dogs who don’t meet what we thought they, or we, would expect from the puppy stage, but it’s also pften aired as a snipe to whoever “surrendered” the dog.
   We got a dog from the inner wheatbelt- not at all on a whim- who had been handballed to the “rescue group”, ie Northam pound, because his owner had not expected the kelpie-retriever pup he bought to grow into the greyhound-saluki that he was. Good gravy, he was a brilliant dog, rangey, smoochy, attentive… but running rampant at anything which twitched. Took the chicken hunger off him, took his balls off, but he was blasting off at the sheep at 80km/h and all but running them through fences, so we reached out to a greyhound “rescue” group. He was then adopted by a single lawyer chick, who made a facebook page for him- my wife eventually dm’ed her and told her to wind her neck in, there were lots of well-meaning yet fallible people behind him, and she was not the second coming.
   And, at work, my wife has her antennae out for the mention of the R word, because it is often incanted by people who wish to say “my dog is uncontrollable, and yet he, and us, are also unaccountable.”
   …
   Segue- after an unscheduled vacancy, I’ve recently got a second-hand dog, sight unseen from the opposite end of the country. The “rescue” group were realistic, hard-headed in their assessment of both her and me, but ultimately devoted to getting the dog to a good home.
   She’s lovely. She’s roughed up a chook, she barks at the dark, she’s too slow for foxes, her back legs are broken and bent awry, she’ll suffer from arthritis with them, she’s the wrong sex- ie nothing that i can’t live with. Ultimately she’s everything i am after in a dog- a “lurcher” a whippet-sheepdog cross, a variety i had first by accident and then by desire- fresh out of the box. I love her to bits, and so far she’s got a bottomless tolerance for snogging.
   Like Gemma found, it’s funny to think that she’s an instant part of our hearts. I’m a one-man, one dog man… part of me wants to start another male from pup, when the right litter appears at the right time… but i’m unsure, this one bitch might just do me for the next fifteen or so years.
2. C.L. says:

   10 September, 2023 at 5:19 pm

   Fascinating, Wally. Your dog expertise is well beyond mine.

   I have often wondered how and why ‘rescue dog’ became a thing. It’s not something I remember hearing in the past.
3. Entropy says:

   10 September, 2023 at 6:26 pm

   I guess they are “rescued” from the green dream.
4. A reader says:

   10 September, 2023 at 6:32 pm

   Off the GT topic, I think the rescue animal thing became a term as the animism and animal worship has become a bigger part of society. As a relatively young bloke, trying to find an eligible lady who worships God and not her Dog is incredibly difficult. Crazy cat ladies aren’t the concern any longer.

   As for GT, I sometimes disagree with her takes, but her Buster photos were always great. I’m not an animal person, but I found I was kind of fond of that dog.
5. NFA says:

   10 September, 2023 at 9:03 pm

   The place has ‘gone to the dogs’.
6. C.L. says:

   10 September, 2023 at 9:09 pm

   😂