Its taken me awhile to be able to write about this but it is my sad duty to report the passing of our little buddy Buster.
In the run up to our last trip to Maine the boy wasn't feeling well and during the trip we could tell that he was really suffering and we had to let him go.
Getting a dog is signing up for sadness, you know that day is coming but there is really no way to prepare for it.
Buster came to live with us in 2008, he was the first dog I'd ever had. Looking back I mentioned him on this very blog June 23, 2008, we were set to pick him up on the 28th but there doesn't seem to have been a picture until the ChowdaQ 2009 post.
The shelter he was in called him "Feisty" which is kind of a dumb name for a dog. They claimed they were trying to encourage him to be more outgoing. He never really was outgoing but he was inquisitive and always wanted to check out what everybody was up to.
I want to use this space tell a couple Buster stories, the picture above he's got his head bandaged. This was our first Coleman collectors gathering all the way back in 2010. We'd driven to just north of Syracuse, NY and arrived well after dark. Then through a series of dumb events Buster got bit on the ear by our host's dog. I could get the bleeding to stop but only until he would shake his head. So we went to the emergency vet who bandaged him up. That bandaging came after he shook his head and sprayed blood all over the wall.
This is a shot from 2015 which was a big snow year. I'd taken to walking Buster in the state park near our house because there was a plowed section. As a low slung dog the deep snow was difficult for him. This was early in the era where I would let him go without holding the leash. The deep snow made this pretty safe because there was really nowhere he could go.
At some point he was off digging in the snow on the side of the road. I thought he was digging up poop to eat and tried to hurry along to catch up to him. Suddenly he stopped digging and ran to me with something in his mouth. Prepared for the worst I was very surprised when he gave me this $10 bill and then just ran off again. I posted about it on Facebook and immediately had a bunch of offers to walk my dog for me...
Like most dogs Buster wasn't much for wearing clothes, unlike most dogs he tolerated it fairly well. I wish I had more pictures of him in the little cowboy hat.
He didn't mind other dogs much, in fact late in life he barely noticed them. He'd give a sniff if they got really close but mostly he didn't care. There were a couple people, other than Angie and I of course, who he really loved and one was Fred.
The other was our neighbor Bill, I wish I could find pictures of them together. In the last couple years Buster could barely see or hear but somehow he would know if Bill was out and would immediately head over to see him. Bill was without a doubt Buster's favorite person and Bill likes to tell how Buster was the first to introduce him to the neighborhood.
Buster got allowed into a lot of places dogs weren't normally welcome or normally didn't go. A good example was on Thanksgiving at Angie's uncle Rick and aunt Carla's house. Rick and Carla had a little dog Jimmy who was kind of high strung and "doesn't like dogs." We were going to Maine after dinner so we just kept Buster in the car, it was only a couple hours and we'd go out to check on him, no problem. Well about the first time one of us goes to check on him Rick and Carla decide it'd be okay if Buster sat in the sun porch off the back of the house. The sun porch has a glass door and Jimmy eyed Buster through the door. It wasn't long before somebody opened the door and Jimmy burst into the sun porch and nothing exciting happened. Pretty soon Jimmy thinks Buster is his best friend. Buster of course didn't really care. I wish I had pictures of that, it was pretty cool.
The number 1 thing I will always remember Buster for was his ability to dismember toys. Soft dog toys are rated 1-10, we usually got #10 tough toys but we figured that number was really just the time, in minutes, before Buster could have it torn to pieces. Tough toys are more expensive so for Christmas he'd get a variety of cheaper, low rated toys. Since it was Christmas we'd allow him to do whatever he wanted which meant dismembered toys.
We've still got a bag of soft toy pieces that need to go to the fabric recycler.
Buster's relationship to hunting was complicated. He'd never had any training since I wasn't hunting much when he first came to live with us. Early on he was fine with the sound of gunfire and I used to take him to the shooting range with me frequently. Then he got really sensitive to the sound of gunfire and extended that to not liking guns at all. Frankly he'd kind of freak out at any gun shaped object, like a stick or piece of pipe. That ended a year or two ago and last fall I took him with me to deer camp.
It was hard to get a picture of Buster, me and the grouse all at the same time.
Up until very recently he really needed to be walked every day or every other day at the least. In recent years those walks didn't need to be very long but they needed to happen. On two different occasions I took him after lunch into the field behind the camp where I managed to shoot a grouse. In both cases the gunshot prompted him to take a glance back "I hope this isn't going to interrupt our walk."
The last few months were tough for all of us, its rough knowing the end is coming but not knowing exactly where that is or how it will arrive. He was with us just about 17 years and even now, almost a month on I still think "Do I need to take the dog out?" or I'll walk by his bowl and think I should get him some water.
We'll get another dog at some point but there will never be another Buster. Farewell little bud, may there be rabbits to chase, a soft bed to lie in and all the treats you could ever want.
