One of the things we discovered about Buster was that his protective instinct was constant whether it was in the yard, in the car or in the house.
My daughter, Meghan, loves to recount how he would happily get in the car to do errands with her and then hang out the window barking at everyone who passed by.
On one occasion, she was driving down Glenwood Avenue when she passes a woman jogging with earphones on, which kept her from hearing the car’s approach. As they came abreast of the jogger, Buster leaned out the window and let out a large bark near her ear. The poor woman jumped a foot into the ear, letting out a scream that almost caused Meghan to drive into the retaining wall next to the road.
When he was young, doing errands with him was a challenge. If you left him for a few minutes in Wegman’s parking lot, his separation anxiety would kick in and he’d hang out the window whining and crying loudly. On more than one occasion I came out of the store to find a crowd gathered around the car convinced that he was being tortured.
His sense of protection extended particularly to Terri, Meghan and Kate. If somebody came in the house and gave one of them a hug, he’d jump up on them to push them away. Very few people ignored this or pushed back. Ultimately, I was able to use this to my advantage.
Terri and I were reading in bed one night, when one of the girls came upstairs and asked if she could watch a movie downstairs with her boyfriend.
“Sure,” I replied, “make yourselves at home but don’t stay up too late.”
After she went back downstairs, Terri said to me, “Aren’t you concerned about them being downstairs alone?”
“They’re not alone,” I replied, “Buster is down there with them.”
I was dead certain that my boy would climb up on the couch across from them and the first time the guy put his arm around her, he’d be met with a low growl that would cause him to re-think the wisdom of that move or any others.
Buster never disappointed me in that situation.
Later, I would have to resort to introducing myself to a prospective boyfriend by declaring, “I want you to know that I used to represent people that killed people for a living.”
That introduction had the same effect as Buster’s growl but caused my daughters to take a dim view of me for a few days.
Buster could be somewhat discriminating about who he would let into the house.
One summer my elderly aunt, who lived in Canada, stayed with us while she attended a reunion.
Terri and I had plans for the evening of her reunion and gave her a key to the house in the event she came home ahead of us.
“I hope you’re not afraid of dogs, Aunt Margie,” I told her, “Buster can be territorial.”
“I’ll be fine,” she told me.
When we got home, we discovered that she had no problem getting into the house and going to sleep.
At the next family gathering, Margie’s visit came up and one of my cousins asked her if she wasn’t nervous trying to get into the house with a dog that size and that protective.
She waved away any concern telling the group, “it’s easy if you just reach in and pet him.”
My sense of security began to wane.
After Kate and Meghan went off to college, Terri, Buster and I continued to live in the six bedroom house on Strathmore Drive.
With the girls gone, sleeping arrangements shuffled somewhat and Buster now had a bedroom with a queen size bed at the end of the hall over the driveway.
For some reason that I never quite figured out, he also had the telephone in his room.
I am a pretty sound sleeper and I didn’t hear it ring one night when the police called to see if they could bring a search warrant over for me to review.
When I didn’t answer the call, they pulled into the driveway and knocked on the driveway door.
This resulted in Buster charging down the stairs, barking, which woke me up?
I threw some clothes on, went downstairs and let them in while I reviewed the warrant.
A few weeks later, they called with another warrant and, as usual, I didn’t hear the phone ring.
They pulled into the driveway and called the house again.
I later learned that after the second call, they called their superior for instructions about what to do.
“Go knock on Fahey’s door,” he told them, “that will wake the dog up and he’ll answer the door.
The cops and I had found our rhythm.
I was later recounting this tale to my friend, Larry Hackett, while Kate Fahey listened.
When I was done, she asked Larry, “Do you think Buster is a police dog?”
He thought about it for a minute and replied, “I think he’s more like a crossing guard dog.”
I wouldn’t argue with that.
More next week