Buddy

Everyone has one thing they want more than anything else: one thing they follow through their lives, like the donkey after the proverbial carrot. Sometimes it's vague - a feeling of happiness or contentment they had as a child - and sometimes it's specific: a place, a beach, a square of a field in the sunshine, a person, a tree, a corner of a bed in the right room. More often than not nobody knows what it is but the person who chases, and even then they're not quite sure: propelled towards they don't know what, and they don't know how, but propelled just the same. And, every so often, it's a little easier to identify, and a little easier to name. A little easier to point at and say: that's my carrot, and always has been. It always will be, even after I've eaten it right up.

For me, it's a book with my name on the spine: a story I can leave behind. But for my sister it's even more specific than that. And his name is Buddy.

As teeny, tiny children - a couple of blonde heads, wearing identical clothes (thanks mum) - there was rarely a day that went past when my sister didn't ask for a puppy. When she wasn't asking for a puppy she was running towards a puppy; when she wasn't running towards a puppy she was hanging onto a puppy by the neck; when she wasn't hanging onto a puppy by the neck she was asking for a puppy again. Every Christmas, she would write a letter to Santa, and every Christmas - when my list stretched on, sometimes, for pages (I was often just writing for the sake of it, or because I wanted to test Santa's patience) - it would read: Dear Santa, I want a puppy, Love Tara. Sometimes, when she was worried that she wasn't being polite enough, it would read, Dear Santa, Please please please can I have a puppy, Love Tara. Or, when she got frantic, Dear Santa, Have I been bad? Please may I have a puppy this year. Love Tara. In fact, before she could write those infamous words, her letter to Santa involved a rectangle with four sausages coming out of the bottom of it, two circles attached to the top of it and a smiley face, under which - when she hit three or four - would be carefully written the letters DOG. Her first word was: doggy. As a toddler she would go into an adoring trance whenever a dog was anywhere near by, and no amount of "leave it alone, Tara, it's dirty" would keep her away from stroking whatever mangy mutt wandered past. And for many years she was devoted to the idea of being a vet, until she realised that she had zero interest in any other household pets, and so might be a little too exclusive to make a living.

Sadly, I simultaneously had a phobia of dogs - thanks to being 'attacked' by a Rhodesian Ridgeback at the age of three - so needless to say my parents spent a large proportion of our country walks trying to keep my sister from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields towards an errant dog, and to stop me from breaking loose and sprinting across the fields away from them. Our Sundays were therefore punctuated, frequently, with pre-school screaming: both enthusiastic and terrified.

My sister has never really been able to put her passion for dogs into words, other than the fact that they are unconditionally loving, happily dependent and capable of being fiercely loved without getting twitchy: similar reasons, in fact, to why I prefer cats. All she has ever known is that a puppy would complete her, and that her life would be perfect from that moment on.

And a month ago she finally, finally got one.

His name is Buddy. He's a Boston Terrier, and when she got him he was eight weeks old, and small enough to fit into a hand. I've met him, via Skype, and I've never seen a funnier looking dog: he's all wide set eyes and droopy cheeks and set chin, like ET but covered in fur. He's extremely naughty - has ignored all of the many, many toys my sister bought for him in favour of her best bra, which he carries around in his teeth - and goes into a heavy sulk whenever he is taken for a walk: has to be dragged along Brighton seafront, with his little bottom resolutely planted in the sand. Apparently he has zero interest in any kind of fresh air, and will only participate in any of it if he's wrapped firmly in a blanket and carried around, and Tara gets appalled looks daily by her neighbours as they watch her pulling a teeny tiny, furious puppy along the pavement with his paws dug into the cement. I bought him a Santa outfit for Christmas, and he destroyed it before it was out of the wrapping, and his favourite activity - from what I can tell, via a webcam - is either sitting on my sister's lap and trying to get down her top, licking her face, or sleeping.

All in all, he is, in fact, quite a lot like her boyfriend.

And my sister is in love. She's the happiest I have ever seen her; like a wax figure with a lamp in the back of her head. She doesn't just see a dog: she sees 27 years of wanting and chasing and hoping and dreaming and sending letters up the chimney, all wrapped up in a 12 week old bundle of alien-like, cross looking fluff. Something to love, and something to love her back: unconditionally, unrelentlessly. She finally has her carrot, and - honestly - I've been scared for her. Scared that she would be disappointed; that nothing could ever live up to a quarter of a century of wishing.

"Is he what you thought he would be?" I asked her at the weekend, as we chatted with Buddy curled up on her lap, snoring.
"Holly," she said, looking at him and pulling at his ear. "He's not what I thought he would be. He's so, so much better than that. He's absolutely perfect."
At which point Buddy woke up and looked at my sister with an expression that simply said: Likewise. And then he climbed up to her shoulder again and tried to get back down her top again.

We all have one thing we chase: one thing to make it all worth it. Be it a person, or an object, or a place, or a corner of world that's ours, we should all keep trying to find it. Keep pushing towards it, no matter how hard it gets, or how many letters we have to write, or how many wrong ones we have to chase and hold onto first. Because all we can ever really hope is that when we get it - if we're lucky enough to finally get it - it won't be just what we wanted: it will be even better. 

And if we're really, really lucky, it will be a carrot worth every single second of the journey.