Review: Vivien Horler

Three Wild Dogs – And the truth, a memoir, by Markus Zusak (Macmillan)

One does very much like a dog.

That was a line attributed to Queen Victoria in a play produced at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town a few years ago. She was right – one does.

But there are dogs and dogs, and Markus Zusak’s tolerance does seem to surpass understanding.

However, this is a book about dogs, and one does… etc.

Zusak is the author of the mega-selling The Book Thief, but in this memoir he comes across as a pretty ordinary bloke living in Sydney with his wife and kids and, consecutively, three “wild” dogs.

My dog, Sofia, is a border-doodle, a medium-sized scruffy sort of miniature Bouvier. She is four now, and relatively well behaved, unless you are a cat or a squirrel – or a fisherman, because she’ll go for your lure. She’s been hooked in the flesh once.

She loves small children – she loves everyone – but when she was younger her love would translate into jumping up on them, which would make them cry and their parents shout at me.

I’m telling you this because I know what it’s like to have a dog whose public behaviour you worry about. As in, on a walk: “Oh God, there’s a small child! Sofia come here!” She invariably wouldn’t.

Zusak (who has an aversion to doodles, a point in his disfavour, but then every second dog in Sydney is a doodle), has had three dogs who couldn’t be trusted in public. This made for some pretty fraught walks.

He describes himself as a friendly, easy-going person, generous of spirit.

However he says: “…I haven’t necessarily been the model citizen people think I am, or should be, especially in terms of my dogs. I’ve done some pretty unconscionable things.

“There have been murders, for example, and cover-ups… There have been street fights, park fights, an array of more casual beatdowns, and vandalism, mostly at home. There’s also been a lot of swearing, cursing and blasphemy…The police were called once…”

You get the picture.

His three dogs were Reuben – probably the most loved – Archer and Frosty. Frosty is still with us, or was as the time of writing. All were rescues, or as Zusak puts it, came from the pound. (He’s allergic to the word “rescues”.)

Reuben was like “a wolf at your door”, Archie “a pretty boy assassin” and Reuben’s hitman. Frosty is probably the most treacherous of the lot.

At some point Zusak adopted a mantra: “All I have to do is get these… dogs through their lives without them seriously hurting someone.”

One of them – they were never sure which – did bite the piano teacher, and Reuben once went for the plumber. Zusak and his wife Mika hoped that was a one-off, but it wasn’t.

Reuben loved their toddler daughter Kitty, and she loved him. But when they brought baby Noah home from the hospital, Reuben thought he was dinner. To dogs, apparently, newborn babies don’t smell exactly human. Mika was sitting on the couch with Noah on her lap, when Reuben sniffed, and then lunged at the baby.

People said afterwards they should have got rid of the dog. They couldn’t. But they watched him meticulously, hyper-vigilantly. This is exhausting.

Eventually Reuben came to love Noah as he loved Kitty. But it took a while.

Zusak says he thinks Reuben and Archer were a kind of mirror to his own hidden turmoils, his wildness within. It worked for him.

Once Reuben knocked Zusak out in the park, which meant an ambulance had to be called. Zusak was fine, more or less, although he needed physio (and years later a knee replacement), but he says: “One of the more useful parts of dog ownership is that they get you out of bed every day, even when you don’t feel like it. If you’re sick they get you up. They’re the best personal trainers in the world.”

(This is true. For the past four years, as soon as I’m up and dressed, I’m fixed by a pair of accusing eyes. So out we go, every day, rain or shine – a lot of rain – and I think it’s done me good.)

This is a book about families, writing, everyday life and, of course, dogs. At one point Zusak says that he loved Reuben as much as a man could love a dog.

A dog is company, a dog is someone to talk to so you don’t seem like a mad old woman talking to yourself, a dog is huggable and gets you out. And if you’re worried about getting a Reuben – or a Sofia – there are ways to avoid that.

In case you’re a cat person, there are two fearsome cats in this tale, but this is primarily a book about dogs.

It’s illustrated with fabulous prints of “wild” dogs – see the cover – by Daniel New.

• Wild Dogs is one of Exclusive Books’s top reads for May.