The author who suffers a Russian wolfhound

Newsroom

3 days ago

I do not love my pets equally. In that scene from Sophie's Choice where Meryl Streep is on the train platform? The cat would be coming home with me and the dog would be boarding the first class carriage bound for the Zone of Interest.
My dog Iggy Dogstoyevsky is a Borzoi, a Russian Wolfhound, and they are not a normal dog. Where the average labrador lives to please his master, the Borzoi has an innate, brutal autonomy and wants primarily to do what he likes and so much the better if this torments you into a state of apoplexy. I have trained Iggy. He knows all the commands. He just chooses not to obey any of them ever.
Iggy is the product of a breeding programme that began in the 1780s in a palace called Kreznovsky two hundred miles out of Moscow on the outskirts of the Siberian tundra. Here, mad Count Alexei Orlov, the man who had murdered Catherine the Great's husband in a drunken knife fight so that she could take the throne, decided to knuckle down to creating the perfect killing machine. He spliced an Arabian greyhound, a Russian sheepdog and a dollop of Saluki to produce a hound to send out ahead of his vodka-soaked hunting parties.
Borzoi (it's Russian for swift) were generally deployed in packs of three; their task was bringing down a timber wolf and deploying their Vadar-like patented death grip to choke the life out of the poor creature. Eventually, once the wolf was dead, the drunk Russians would arrive and celebrate but it was the Borzoi alone who did the deed and ran their own show. No wonder Iggy won't listen to me.
Iggy was bred, as Liam Neeson might say, with a particular set of skills. His thick ruff of silken fur is designed to keep the wolf from getting a go at his throat plus it keeps him warm in a bleak boreal snowstorm. Elegant, leggy and aristocratic, he was purpose-built to please a long line of lunatics. Why then did I want him? Looking back, and I say this in all seriousness, I wish I had bought my second choice of dog instead which was a teacup Pomeranian.
Iggy was a poor decision on my part, and what really hurts is that this issue is now becoming a problem on the page. My new book The Last Journey (publisher: 'a novel for eight-88 year-olds') is narrated by a cat and located in a world where a fascist government rises to power and makes some very dark choices about the fate of its disenfranchised feline community. Pusskin, the hero of the story, is modelled on my cat, Alexsandr Pusskin. It was a joy to write. Pusskin was the perfect muse. And now his book is done, and I'm working on a follow-up and like an utter fool I have turned to … Iggy.
Needless to say I am on struggle street. Iggy is a poor muse for a lead. The book has been torturously slow. It was supposed to be finished months ago – instead I have languished in the early chapters because Iggy refuses to behave on the page. Why would he when he won't behave in real life?
And so he's been bumped. The central character is now an Irish Terrier. But now that Iggy has a buddy role instead of carrying the lead, I've begun to notice new things about the real-life Iggy. He's a natural comedian. His lugubrious Russian nature, that wretched expression he deploys as he sprawls about the house, moping on the sofa as if nothing good will ever happen again? Hilarious. His sense of always being up for an adventure? His menacing unpredictability. It all makes him a classic buddy – useful in a literary sense. He is alluringly a creature out of time and context; a great beauty bred by Tsars to stalk palaces and hunt the taiga and he is stuck here in tedious suburbia with me and Pusskin. No wonder he's bonkers.
I see now that the problem was never Iggy, it was me. I thought it was a good idea to bring a wolf-annihilating machine capable of reaching speeds of 60 kilometres an hour into a villa in downtown Ponsonby. It was not a good idea.
And on that train platform, could I really let him go? Despite his annoying qualities I still love the great galoot. Of course I don't actually want to be rid of him. Mostly.
The Last Journey by Stacy (Simon & Schuster, $20.99) is published today, July 2. It's about good old Pusskin the cat and his loving owner, eleven-year-old Lottie. The bond between them is unbreakable – but when the bird population is depleted, cats are made a scapegoat. Keen to protect his cat friends on the cul-de-sac, Pusskin sets off on a journey that will take them to a hidden island at the furthest reaches of the country….