It really is a dog's life

TimesLIVE

30-06-2025

He recollects the memory of his 14-year-old self reading SE Hinton's classic YA novel, The Outsiders, and knowing it's fiction but believing it when he's in it. 'That's the thing that made me want to be a writer.
'The intensity of writing about the dogs dying and really feeling myself get emotional like that, to me, you go to that place where you're believing you're there and that's what you're trying to produce. That's always the best moment, when you go, 'Ah, it's real!' It's the magic act of turning black words on a white page into someone actually being inside that book.
'It reminded me of being 16 again and trying to write my first novel, in the sense of the joy of going, 'I'm doing it, I'm actually doing it!' I think that's why I'm so grateful to all three of these dogs and the two cats we had, and my family to have had that freedom.'
Curs aside, Zusak writes about the exuberant feline duo, Brutus and Bijoux, remembering them with tenderness, love and honesty (they mastered the art of indoor micturition).
'If Brutus was still alive, he'd be in here sitting on my keyboard because he would always sit on something warm,' Zusak recalls. 'They were real characters and I really wanted the book to be anecdotal. There are a lot of books about dogs and they're quiet philosophising about animal behaviour and dog behaviour. I wanted to touch on a few ... not philosophical things ... but just how we think about animals. Like when you realise you're feeding your animals other animals,' he bashfully grins. 'The flipside with this is not wanting to have any veneers in writing this: if I whinged and complained about the bloody cats, that's what I'm going to talk about. It's not an Instagram post showing our beautiful pets, it's showing them as beautiful, but also complex and hilarious and vicious. And same with us as the humans.'
Zusak notes how, when writing nonfiction, you have to show people who you truly are, and this extends to his dogs: their loving natures aside, they've killed a cat, killed a possum and bitten his children's piano teacher. Did he ever feel he had to limit himself regarding how much he'd like to reveal about his dogs' true selves?
'It was such a joy to reminisce, even though some of this stuff was not funny at the time, especially the piano teacher incident.' He compares the severity of his hounds' misdemeanours: when there's a human involved its far more serious than cat slaughter.
'I sat there with my head in my hands and went 'thank God', which isn't really the reaction people are expecting but at least there was no more human involvement, which immediately takes out 99.9% of the worry. It was a really terrible moment ...'
He likens writing a book to building a brick wall, comprising a sufficient number of bricks to keep it standing but not too many either, resulting in having to make choices, one of which was to remain truthful: 'There definitely weren't any worse incidents than what were written in the book.
'Reuben and Archer were protectors, whereas Frosty wasn't a protector and I've had some pretty close calls with him. If someone comes to our house, it's no problem. He's not a threat to humans but he was a real hunter compared to the other two. If we were down the coast on the beach, and I alluded to it ... but if Frosty saw a kangaroo, he was gone!' he grins.
Zusak adds that, as a novelist, he's never written short stories, yet he likes the idea of a short story being a part of the whole story: 'Just let this part tell the whole: the great bits, the terrible bits, the sad bits. And hopefully that tells the whole experience without telling everything.'
On the topic of telling everything: Zusak frequently forthrightly expresses his disdain regarding people who refer to bags used for disposing of canine faecal matter as 'poo bags', preferring the frank 'shit bags'.
What does he have to say to those who use the term 'poo bags'?
'Just grow up!' he laughs, adding 'Can I just say that's probably the best question I've ever been asked! And that's across all my books, as I've always dismissed the idea of people who say 'sugar' when they mean 'shit'.'