Ball, Then Breakfast

"Aye. He's affa black." That was the whole of Tarry's welcome. It has turned out to be the biggest thing anybody has ever said to him.

Tarry arrives at Wester Glassel in a cardboard box, eight weeks old, into a farmyard above the River Dee with a sky the colour of a wet stone. Eleven acres. A byre, a shed, a burn, a stand of beech, and, over the march dyke, eleven cows who want to come through and who are held back, as far as he can establish, by nothing whatsoever except him.

He keeps a diary. It covers the vital matters: the discovery, on Day Eleven, of a grey tennis ball under the dresser, and the single arrangement that will govern the rest of his life; the correct procedure for rolling in something dead; the North Sea, which is water that comes at you; and puppy class in Torphins village hall, where he is awarded a certificate reading "Most Enthusiastic," which the Boss identifies immediately as what they say when you are no good.

There is the Cow Watch, established at five months old and kept twice daily for twelve years, unpaid, unsupervised, and never once thanked. There is a heron, a squirrel, a vacuum cleaner and one specific gull at a harbour, all of whom are enemies. There is a nine-year campaign to be allowed on the sofa. And there is the good coat coming out of the wardrobe, and a door closing with a dog on the wrong side of it.

Funny about mud, unreliable on arithmetic, and quietly devastating about what it is to belong to somebody, this is twelve years of one dog's life on a Scottish hill, told entirely in his own words.