When we agreed to take Buster, we really didn’t have a complete sense of what his personality was.
He was a year old and the couple who was giving him up assured us that he wasn’t mean or vicious and this seemed borne out by the way he interacted with their children when we were there.
We quickly discovered that he was a dominant dog as evidenced by the way he would try and herd Terri and the girls downstairs each morning by nipping at their ankles.
It became increasingly annoying for them and although they told him “no” or “stop” it continued.
It all came to a head one Sunday evening when he started it and I happened to be on the landing with Terri between the first and second floor.
I raised my voice and firmly told him “no,” only to be met with loud barking. I repeated the word louder and the barking got louder.
I swallowed hard reached down, grabbed him by the collar and pinned him on his back and repeated the word loudly.
I held him on the floor for a minute and repeated “no” again before letting him up.
Little did he know how nervous I was about this show down.
We had one more encounter like this and then he accepted the fact that I was leader of the pack.
From that day forward, he would, for the most part, obey when I gave a command…….unless I let him off the leash and he went stone deaf.
He was also very territorial and protective.
For the first couple of weeks, he wouldn’t let the Harrigans cleaning lady come up the driveway to get to their house. Eventually, he decided she was part of the pack and relented.
A more complicated situation involved deliveries to their house.
Denny did much of her writing at home and was the recipient of occasional FedEx deliveries.
Since we didn’t know when the FedEx deliveries were scheduled, whether the package was delivered might depend on whether Buster and Casey were outside.
Although we later discovered that Casey held the upper hand between them, she was only too happy to back Buster up when it came to preventing deliveries.
All of this was minor compared to the situation that shortly unfolded after Buster’s arrival.
Terri and I were standing in our kitchen one Saturday morning, when we heard a loud male voice repeatedly shout, ” How do you like that?”
We opened the door onto the driveway and found the mailman spraying Buster with a can of “Halt.”
Buster had backed up, out of range and was barking loudly.
Apparently, the mailman had come up the driveway and was trying to put the mail in the box, which squeaked loudly, resulting in Buster racing around the house from the back yard barking.
I tried to calm the mailman down by telling him that Buster had never bitten anyone which seemed to give him little comfort or reassurance.
Over time, I would give this same assurance to visitors that he barked at until Terri told me that it didn’t have the desired effect.
The mailman left after uttering a few choice curse words and I had the vague realization that I had seen this movie before.
I quickly got into the car and drove to the Post Office on South Ave, where I rented a post office box.
The ghost of my sister’s dog, Lucky, had returned.
A month or two after we started picking up the mail at the post office, our mailman went on vacation and his substitute made a friend of Buster, by providing him with dog treats.
Mail deliveries resumed for two weeks until our regular mailman returned.
He would march past the house, glaring at Buster with his can of “Halt” in his outstretched hand.
Buster and Casey dutifully ignored him.