GUS IS HIS NAME, a three-year-old, spayed male cross between a border collie and a setter. Black, with longish fur, amber eyes and a white stripe down the chest.

Gus is what is termed a "mongrel." He is not "pure-bred," not an engineered dog, not a product of canine eugenics. There is an element of randomness to his DNA. Gus is a multiracial, multicultural dog. He is what Canada is becoming as globalization continues its seemingly inevitable course.

Just as he is an individual and not a "breed," Gus is not, in any real sense of the word, "my" dog. This is a dog with a past. I didn't name him, nor did I train him to sit or heel, though he does, and can shake a paw if I ask him nicely. I have taught him nothing, probably never will. Ours will never be the standard dog-master relationship. He is not so much my pet as my associate.

I acquired Gus, if that is the word, by chance. A popular dog at the watering hole I have been known to patronize, he could no longer be cared for by his owner, who desperately sought a foster home for a period of at least three months. I had no good reason to refuse, and would have a troubled conscience for life if he ended up in the pound.

Remarked a fellow patron: He gets to you.

Having taken on this temporary sidekick (He's lying beside me as I write, nose on my foot—Good dog. Such a good boy), I am writing about the experience on the theory that our tale might have an Odd Couple appeal, in which I play Felix to his Oscar—or perhaps the other way around.

Frankly, I never wanted a dog, though my family was fond of animals. Mother had a robin named Frank, to whom she fed crushed worms and who would fly down from a distant branch when she called. Father could anthropomorphize a snapping turtle—in fact he did. Her name was Bertha, a prehistoric creature said to resemble a rock covered in spikes. "Bertha doesn't have much to say," Dad would comment, unnecessarily.

Meanwhile, at least a dozen pussers passed through our house and our lives. Having a cat is like playing host to a second cousin who came to visit and never left. Unlike relatives, however, cats kill pests, they don't make pests of themselves.

As ex-farm people my parents viewed dogs as "too much trouble," like hiring a farm hand with nothing to do. (The issue of protection never came up; in 1960s Nova Scotia, there was nobody to protect you from.) Nor did farm people slobber over puppies, who were promptly given away or drowned.

Hence, I failed to acquire a "way" with pooches and have known dogs to growl, snap and threaten to reduce me to bloody stumps—and I'm talking docile family dogs, not the sharks in fur people acquire for their personal security.

As emotional preparation for the experience, I asked my friend Cedric to define the animal's appeal. His reply: A dog loves you far more than you love yourself.

It's been a month now, and I see his point.

Bernard Shaw once said that we fall in love, not for the loved one's ability to entertain us, but for our ability to entertain them. That might explain why I have so thoroughly fallen for Gus.

He seldom leaves my side. He sleeps by our bed. He washes my face in the morning, tail wagging, overjoyed that I'm awake.

Just now, apropos of nothing, he stood up on his hind legs, put his paws on my shoulders, gave me a good lick, then went out for a drink of water, leaving me with the words of the patron at Soda's ringing in my ears.

He gets to you.

At first I found this level of devotion unnerving. I returned the affection out of politeness, so as not to hurt his feelings. Then somehow he sucked me into the world of dogdom, and now I find myself acting a bit doggy myself.

In fact, though Gus is hardly a one-man dog, I fear I have become a one-dog man.

Next month: Walking the dog.

122 WESTERN LIVING October 2004

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