All this talk about flaws—egregious or slight—and then, wouldn’t you know, along comes a piece in the May 27 issue of Time (see below) that hits the spot. Our Tommy person says that for all his awe around showboat dogs, he prefers the hardier mongrels. Disease wise, they’re less at risk due to inbreeding. Their dogginess is on full display.

I’ll say.

I was a little grudging about getting Buster.

Jennifer kept saying I needed a dog. No. I didn’t want one, either. Nor did Paulson. What didn’t our daughter understand? She found a puppy on Facebook, anyway. She and Rebecca drove us to to see him, like we needed a taxi for the elderly, or something. Ug. As far as I was concerned, his head was too small for his body.

After a night of his barking I was ready to send him back. Paulson said no.

Four years on, who’s the luckier—us, or our boy who sprawls on the porch every night surveying his kingdom—is hard to tell. And as for funky (how Tommy puts it), my word.

Look at the soggy black-olive nose. Lift the soft flap of an ear and see the patches of tacky dirt on the underskin from that mutt snuffling his face down through wet leaves or tree-trunk rot for a possible mouse.

Look at him bounding—bouncing—through the high grasses, collecting nasty burrs in his coat, overjoyed because the lady rose up off her rear and stepped into the yard and might might might tail him down the path.

Look at that drowned rat after his bath—the meager torso, the frowzy fur flattened to a sheen, the smell.

Look at the front paws’ muddy rubber pads, how when he leaps, they bonk bonk against my pristine, clothed legs. No! No! Down down down! Un-uh un-uh un-uh. Ug ug. Awwwwww. Sit! Sit!

Look at him working his black gums on one of his hideous dragged-from-a-neighbor’s-field still-haired-and-hooved dead-deer bones, or worse, leaving it right there on the porch for me to kick away, hatefully.

Look at his squealing and yipping and filthy prancing when the car scuds and crunches across the carport stones again and brakes to a stop. His ecstasy, because I came back home like always.

Look at him in all his quivering, disobedient beauty.