Part 2: I Adopted a Senior Golden Retriever 6 Months Ago. He Started Sneaking Out Every Night Through the Doggy Door. I Put a GPS Tracker on Him. He Was Going to a Cemetery a Mile Away.
I want to tell you about Buster and the family who gave him to me, because the rest of this story does not work without them.
I had found the rehoming listing on a Madison-area Facebook group called Older Dogs Needing Homes — Wisconsin. It was a small, well-moderated group with about three thousand members, run by a former veterinary technician named Hilda, who had been doing the work for fifteen years. People posted listings for senior dogs whose situations had changed — the owner had died, gone into a nursing home, moved into assisted living. The dogs needed homes. The group was for matchmaking.
I had been in the group for about two months when the listing for Buster had appeared. The post had been short. It had said:
Senior Golden Retriever, age 9, named Buster. Calm, healthy, fully vaccinated and neutered. Loves walks. Sleeps on the floor. Used to a quiet adult home. Owner is no longer able to care for him. Looking for a calm, single-person or older-couple home. No small children. No other dogs. Contact Marie if interested.
I had messaged Marie that afternoon.
She had responded within an hour. She had been polite, careful, slightly formal. She had asked me about my living situation, about whether I had owned senior dogs before (I had — I had grown up with a Lab who had lived to fifteen), about what kind of home I could offer. She had been doing the kind of vetting a daughter does when she is placing a dog who matters.
I had answered honestly. I had told her about my divorce. I had told her about my therapist. I had told her about needing a presence, not a project.
She had agreed to meet me on Saturday.
I had driven to her house in the Eastside neighborhood. It had been a small ranch on a quiet street with a brick chimney and a wide front porch. Marie had been about my age — late forties — and her husband Cal had been a few years older. They had both been polite. They had been wearing the kind of plain Saturday clothes you wear when you are doing something difficult.
Buster had been on a dog bed in the corner of the living room. He had not gotten up when I had walked in. He had looked at me. He had looked at Marie.
Marie had said, “Buster. Come here, baby.”
He had stood up, slowly, and walked over. He had let me pet him.
Marie had told me that he was nine years old, that he was healthy, that he was up to date on all of his shots. She had told me he had been with her father for nine years. She had told me — and I want to write this part exactly the way she had said it, because I have been thinking about it for three months — “Reese, my dad was eighty-six. He’s not in a position to take care of Buster anymore. We tried to keep him with us, but Cal is allergic, and our daughter has asthma. We can’t have him here. We need to find him a home that will love him.”
She had said not in a position.
She had not said anything else.
She had not said where her father had gone.
I had assumed — and I want to be honest about my assumption — that her father had moved into an assisted living facility or a nursing home. I had assumed he was alive, somewhere in or near Madison, in a place that did not allow dogs. I had assumed Buster’s previous owner was in a small room with a window, and I had been about to take his dog.
I had said, “Marie. I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do? Could I bring Buster to visit your father?”
She had been quiet for a long moment.
Cal had looked at the floor.
Marie had said, “That is very kind of you, Reese. We will let you know if that becomes possible.”
I had nodded.
I had taken Buster home that afternoon. He had ridden in the backseat of my Subaru with the calm slightly resigned attentiveness I would come to understand was his standard mode. He had not whined. He had not paced. He had just lain down on a folded blanket I had brought for him and watched the world go by through the window.
He had walked into my house. He had walked through every room. He had ended in my living room. He had lain down on the bed I had set up for him.
He had stayed.
For three weeks, he had been the easiest dog I had ever lived with.
I had no idea, in those three weeks, that Marie had been holding back something important.
I would not figure out what it was for almost a month after I brought him home.
The first time I noticed the muddy paws was on a Wednesday morning in the middle of April.
I had come into the kitchen at 6:30 AM. I had been about to make coffee. Buster had been on his bed. I had walked over to scratch his ears. I had seen the mud.
It had been on all four paws. Dried. Old enough that it had been there for hours. The yard outside had been freshly seeded over packed soil — there had been no mud out there, only firm grass and the small patches of new green I had been trying to grow.
I had stood in my kitchen and stared at his paws.
I had checked the doggy door. The flap had been working normally. The yard had been fenced — a six-foot wooden privacy fence the previous owners of the bungalow had installed. Buster could not have gotten out of the yard, I had thought.
I had walked outside. I had checked the fence. I had checked every section.
There had been a small gap between the fence and the back of my garage. About eighteen inches wide. I had not noticed it before because the gap had been hidden behind a small juniper bush I had not been maintaining.
The dirt at the base of the gap had been disturbed. There had been clear dog tracks leading through it.
Buster had been getting out of the yard.
I had stood at the fence for a long time.
I had been forty-six years old. I had lived alone for six months. I had been told by a therapist that I needed a presence. I had brought home a calm, dignified, senior Golden Retriever.
He had been sneaking out of my yard at night.
I had gone back inside. I had sat at the kitchen table. I had made my coffee. I had watched Buster sleep on his bed with mud on all four paws.
I had bought the GPS tracker that afternoon at a Petco about ten minutes away from my house. The cashier — a man in his twenties named Davion, who had been wearing a name tag — had asked me, in the polite friendly way pet store cashiers ask, “What’s the dog?”
I had said, “A senior Golden. He started sneaking out of my yard at night. I want to know where he goes.”
Davion had laughed.
He had said, “Probably looking for treats. Or a girlfriend. Or both.”
I had laughed. I had paid the one hundred and fifty dollars. I had taken the GPS tracker home.
That night, I had clipped it onto Buster’s collar. I had said, “Buster. I am sorry, buddy. I just want to know where you go.”
He had looked at me. He had thumped his tail. Once.
He had eaten his dinner. He had drunk his water. He had lain down on his bed.
At 11:47 PM, he had stood up. He had walked, slowly, to the kitchen. He had pushed through the doggy door.
I had been sitting at my kitchen table with my phone open. I had been watching the GPS app.
I had watched the small blue dot move through my fenced backyard. I had watched it move along the fence line. I had watched it disappear behind the garage. I had watched it emerge on the alley side.
I had watched it move down the alley toward Atwood Avenue.
It had taken him nine and a half minutes to walk to where he was going. The dot had moved at a steady pace — about three miles per hour, the slow walking pace of a senior dog who knew his route. It had not stopped. It had not detoured. It had walked, in a straight line as much as the streets of Madison would allow, to a single specific destination.
The destination had been a cemetery.
Resurrection Cemetery is a small Catholic cemetery on the south end of the Atwood neighborhood. It sits on about eight acres of land. It is bordered by a low stone wall that is, in some places, only about three feet tall. It would have been easy for a Golden Retriever to climb over.
The blue dot had stopped at a specific point inside the cemetery.
It had stayed there for ninety-eight minutes.
I had sat at my kitchen table for the entire ninety-eight minutes.
I had been unable to do anything else.
I had imagined, at first, all kinds of explanations. I had imagined Buster had been chasing a rabbit and had gotten cornered. I had imagined he had fallen into a hole. I had imagined he had been hurt.
But the blue dot had not moved at all. It had been stationary. The signal had been steady — the GPS had been working.
He had been lying down. Somewhere in that cemetery.
For ninety-eight minutes.
Then the blue dot had started moving again. It had moved back along the same route. It had retraced every step.
Buster had walked through the doggy door at 2:14 AM. He had walked into the living room. He had lain down on his bed.
He had put his chin on his paws.
I had walked over to him. I had sat down on the rug.
I had not said anything for a long time.
Eventually I had said, “Buster. What are you doing in the cemetery.”
He had not looked at me. He had not lifted his head.
He had just thumped his tail.
Once.
I did not, that night, drive to the cemetery to see what he had been doing.
I want to tell you why, because I have thought about that night many times.
I had not driven to the cemetery because I had been afraid. Not of the cemetery. Of what I might find. I had been afraid that I had brought home a senior dog who was confused, who was wandering, who was failing in some way that I had not been able to see in the daytime.
I had not wanted to find that out at 2:30 AM.
I had wanted to find it out in the morning, in the daylight, when I could think clearly.
I had let Buster sleep. I had gone to bed myself at 3:00 AM. I had not slept much.
The next morning had been a Saturday. I had gotten up at 6:30 AM. I had let Buster out into the yard. I had made coffee. I had loaded a thermos. I had loaded a leash and his harness into my car.
I had driven to Resurrection Cemetery. It had been about a mile and a half from my house by car — slightly longer than the route Buster had taken on foot through the alleys.
The cemetery had been quiet. There had been one groundskeeper — a man in a green shirt — at the front gate, checking something on a clipboard. I had told him I was looking for a specific grave. He had been kind. He had asked me whose.
I had said, “I do not know. I am trying to find one I think my dog has been visiting.”
He had looked at me for a long moment.
He had said, “Ma’am. We get that a lot here. You’d be surprised.”
He had told me where to go based on the location my GPS had logged. He had told me to look for a specific row. He had told me, “If your dog has been visiting, the grave will look like it has been visited.”
I had walked through the cemetery for about fifteen minutes before I had found it.
The grave had been in the back of the cemetery, in a row of relatively newer headstones. It had been a flat granite marker, about two feet by one foot, set flush into the grass. The granite had been gray. The lettering had been simple.
The marker had said:
ARTHUR JAMES VEDRINSKI JANUARY 14, 1937 — JULY 22, 2022 BELOVED FATHER AND GRANDFATHER “COME, BUSTER. STAY WITH ME.”
I had been holding my coffee thermos in my left hand.
I had set it down on the grass.
I had sat down next to the grave.
I had cried for about fifteen minutes.
The grass directly above the granite had been worn smooth, the way grass is worn when something has been lying on it repeatedly. There had been, just beside the marker, a small dog-sized depression in the grass — clearly the spot where Buster had been lying for ninety-eight minutes a night, three or four nights a week, for three years.
I had not, when I had been able to stop crying, immediately understood the timeline.
I want to walk you through it the way I walked through it sitting on the grass in front of Arthur Vedrinski’s grave.
Arthur Vedrinski had died on July 22, 2022.
I had adopted Buster on March 8, 2025.
The date difference was almost three years.
If Buster had been with Arthur for nine years before Arthur’s death — and Marie had told me that — then Buster had been six years old when Arthur died.
Where had Buster been for the three years between Arthur’s death in 2022 and my adoption in March of 2025?
The listing had said owner is no longer able to care for him. Marie had said my dad is not in a position to take care of Buster anymore. She had used the present tense.
She had used the present tense about a man who had been dead for three years.
I had been sitting on the grass, and I had been holding the GPS app on my phone, and I had been looking at the marker, and I had been doing the math.
My phone had buzzed in my hand.
It had been a text message from Marie.
I had not heard from her in six weeks.
The message had said:
Hi Reese. I hope you and Buster are doing well. Cal and I have been meaning to check in. Is there a good time to talk on the phone?
I had stared at the message for a long time.
I had typed a response.
I had typed: Marie. I am at Arthur’s grave. Buster has been visiting it. Why didn’t you tell me?
I had not sent it.
I had deleted it.
I had typed instead: Hi Marie. Yes. I would like to talk. Can you call me this afternoon?
I had sent that one.
I had stayed on the grass next to Arthur’s grave for another forty minutes.
I had said, out loud, to a man I had never met — “Mr. Vedrinski. I have your dog. He misses you. I am going to keep loving him. I am sorry I did not know.”
I had thought I had heard, very faintly, somebody singing — somewhere far across the cemetery. I had probably imagined it.
I had walked back to my car.
I had driven home.
Marie had called me at 2:00 PM.
I want to tell you what Marie told me, because I have been carrying it for three months.
She had called from her kitchen. She had been calm at first — the same careful calm she had used at the rehoming meeting in March. She had asked how Buster was doing. She had asked whether he was settling in.
I had told her he was doing well. I had told her he was a wonderful dog. I had told her he was healthy and happy and that I loved him.
Then I had said, “Marie. I need to ask you something. I am going to be direct because I think we both deserve directness right now.”
She had said, “Okay.”
I had said, “Marie. I went to Resurrection Cemetery this morning. I went because Buster has been going there at night through a small gap in my fence. I put a GPS tracker on him. He goes to the same spot every time. Tonight will be the fourth night I have tracked him. He goes to your father’s grave. He lies on the grass next to your father’s grave for ninety-eight minutes. Then he comes home.”
Marie had been silent on the phone.
She had been silent for a long time.
I had said, “Marie. Your father has been dead for three years. You did not tell me that. You told me he had moved.“
She had started crying.
I want to write down what she said when she could speak again, because I think this is the part of the story that matters most.
She had said, “Reese. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I want to tell you what happened.”
She had said, “My dad died on July 22nd, 2022. Pancreatic cancer. It was fast. We had three months from diagnosis. Buster had been his dog since 2016 — Buster was a graduation gift my dad bought himself when he retired from the post office. They were inseparable. My dad walked Buster three miles every morning along Lake Monona. He had built him a custom dog bed in the bedroom. He used to read the newspaper out loud to him every Sunday morning.”
She had said, “When my dad died, Cal and I took Buster in. We tried to keep him. Cal is allergic. Our daughter has asthma. We knew within a few weeks that we couldn’t keep him long-term. But we couldn’t bear to give him up either. He was the last living piece of my dad.”
She had said, “We tried twice to rehome him. Twice. The first time was in late 2022 — we placed him with a family in Madison. They returned him after eleven days because Buster had stopped eating. He had stopped eating in their house. He had been pining for my dad.”
She had said, “We took him back. We tried again in early 2023. We placed him with a single woman in Sun Prairie. She returned him after two weeks. Same reason. He had stopped eating. He had been waiting for my dad.”
She had said, “We brought him home for the second time. We started medicating him. Our vet put him on an anxiety med. He started eating again, slowly. But he was depressed. He was clearly depressed. He would lie on the rug in the spot where my dad’s chair used to be. He had not been at our house. He had been at my dad’s house, with my dad, for six years. He did not know where he was.”
She had said, “In late 2023, Cal and I bought my dad’s house. We had been planning to sell it. The market was bad. We bought it ourselves. We moved Buster back into it. He had been there for the first six years of his life with my dad. We had been hoping he would settle if he was back in the right house.”
She had said, “Reese. He had been waiting for my dad to come home. We had been keeping him in the house where he had lived with my dad. He had been pacing. He had been sitting at the front door at 5:00 PM every day — that had been the time my dad used to come home from his afternoon walks. He had been doing this for two years.”
She had said, “By early 2025, the vet told us that Buster was probably going to live another two or three years. He was healthy. He was just sad. The vet had said, gently, that we needed to consider a full re-homing — a permanent one, with a person who would not remind him of waiting. A clean break.”
She had said, “When I posted the listing in February, I wrote that my dad had moved. I wrote it that way for two reasons. The first reason was that I could not bear, at that point, to keep saying he was dead — I had been saying it for three years and it had not gotten easier. The second reason was that I had been told by our previous attempts at rehoming that telling the new family the truth — the previous owner died — created a particular kind of energy in the home. The new family kept waiting for Buster to mourn. They kept expecting the depression. They saw the dog through the lens of his loss instead of seeing him as a dog who had a chance to start over.”
She had said, “I had wanted to give you a clean Buster. I had wanted to give you a dog who was settling, not grieving. I had thought, if I told you he had moved, you would just let him be your dog. I had thought that was the kindest thing I could do for him. And for you.”
She had said, “Reese, I am so sorry. I should have told you. I should have trusted you to handle the truth. I was tired, Reese. I had been carrying my dad’s dog and my dad’s grief for three years. I just wanted somebody to take both of them off me. I wanted Buster to land in a place where he could be loved without the weight of who he had been before.”
She had said, “I did not know he had been visiting the grave. I want to be clear about that. I did not know. The grave is at Resurrection Cemetery — that’s the cemetery our family uses, but I have only been there four times in three years. I had not seen any sign that Buster had been visiting.”
She had said, “But it makes sense, Reese. It makes sense. He had been waiting at the wrong door for two years at our house. Maybe when he came to your house, he had been free to go find my dad instead of waiting for my dad to come home. Maybe a mile and a half is closer than two years of waiting at a door.”
She had said, “I am so sorry. I should have told you.”
I had cried while she was talking. She had cried. We had both been quiet for a long time after she finished.
I had said, finally, “Marie. Can I ask you something. Can I take Buster to the grave during the day? Officially? With me there?”
She had cried harder.
She had said, “Reese. Yes. Please. I would like to come with you, the first time, if that is okay.”
We had made plans for the following Sunday.
I want to tell you what I have understood since.
I had thought, when I had been adopting Buster, that I had been getting a quiet, dignified senior dog who needed a presence. That had been the language my therapist had used. That had been the language Marie had used.
I had been getting a grieving dog.
I had been getting a dog who had been waiting at the wrong door for two and a half years before he had come to me.
I have been thinking about what Marie said about the wrong door. I have been thinking about what it had meant for Buster, in the first three weeks at my house, to be in a house that was not Arthur’s. In a house where he did not have to wait at the door at 5:00 PM, because the person who would never come through the door would never come through any door. There was no door at my house that meant anything.
He had been free, at my house, to grieve in a different way.
He had not been waiting for Arthur to walk through the front door anymore.
He had been going to find Arthur where Arthur actually was.
I have been thinking about the timeline of those first three weeks. He had not started visiting the cemetery immediately. He had taken about three weeks to settle. To learn the new house. To map his new neighborhood on his daytime walks. To understand that the world he had been waiting in for two years was no longer a world that contained Arthur in any way he could find.
When he had been certain — I think — that Arthur was not coming to the new house, he had decided to go to where Arthur was.
He had walked a mile and a half through the streets of Madison at midnight to do it.
He had done it three or four nights a week, for ninety-eight minutes a night, lying on the grass next to a flat granite marker, in a small Catholic cemetery, in the dark.
He had been visiting his man.
He had been doing what every grieving creature does when the person they love does not come home — he had been going to find them.
I had thought, when I had first realized what he was doing, that I needed to stop him.
I do not think that anymore.
I think Buster had been doing the work of grief more honestly than most humans I know.
He had been refusing to pretend that Arthur was just gone. He had been saying, every night, with his body: I know where you are. I am coming to lie next to you for a while. I am not going to leave you alone in there.
He had been doing the thing the rest of us cannot do, because we have jobs and routines and we live in a world that does not let us, as a culture, sit on the grass next to our dead for ninety-eight minutes three nights a week.
He had been doing it instead of us.
I have been thinking about Arthur Vedrinski, a man I have never met, a retired Madison postal worker who had bought himself a Golden Retriever puppy as a graduation gift in 2016 and had walked him three miles every morning along Lake Monona for six years.
I have been thinking about how Arthur had loved that dog enough to have engraved on his headstone — Come, Buster. Stay with me.
Arthur had been dead for three years.
The dog had still been coming.
I drove Buster to Arthur’s grave the following Sunday.
Marie met us at the cemetery. She had brought flowers — a small bunch of yellow chrysanthemums, which she told me had been Arthur’s favorite. She had been in plain Sunday clothes again. She had been crying a little before we even got out of the car.
Buster had ridden in my backseat.
He had been calm during the drive, the way he always was. He had been sitting up. He had been watching out the window.
When we had pulled into the cemetery, his ears had come forward.
I had let him out of the car on his leash. He had walked, with calm dignity, in a direct line — not toward Marie, not toward the front gate, but toward the back of the cemetery. He had known exactly where he was going.
He had walked us to Arthur’s grave.
Marie had cried hard when she had seen the small dog-sized depression in the grass.
I had cried too.
Buster had walked over. He had lain down. He had put his chin on his paws. He had sighed — the long, quiet, full-body sigh of a dog who had finally been allowed to do the thing he had been doing in secret.
I had unclipped his leash.
He had not moved.
Marie had crouched down on the grass. She had put her hand on Buster’s head. She had said — quiet, just to him — “Hi, baby. We brought you to see Dad. We brought you officially this time.”
Buster had thumped his tail.
She had said, “Buster. I am so sorry. I am so sorry I did not tell Reese. I am so sorry I did not bring you here. I should have brought you. I am sorry.”
He had pressed his head into her hand.
Marie and I had sat on the grass for almost two hours. Buster had stayed on his depression the entire time. We had not talked much. We had let the cemetery be quiet.
I want to tell you what I have done since.
I have stopped patching the gap in my fence.
I had thought, in the early weeks, about closing it. About blocking it with a small wooden barrier. About forcing Buster to stop sneaking out at night.
I had decided, after the Sunday at the grave, that I was not going to do that.
The gap is still there. The juniper bush still partly hides it. Buster still goes out through it three or four nights a week. He still walks the mile and a half to the cemetery in the dark. He still lies on the depression next to Arthur’s marker for ninety-eight minutes. He still comes home.
I still get up at 2:14 AM, every time he comes home, to sit with him for a few minutes in the dark on the rug.
I do not say much.
I just put my hand on him.
He thumps his tail.
We go back to sleep.
I have also, with Marie’s permission, started taking him to the grave on Sunday afternoons. Officially. Both of us. We bring flowers. We sit on the grass. Sometimes Marie joins us. Sometimes Cal joins us. My therapist — who has been hearing about all of this for months now — said in our last session that this is the best thing I have done for myself since the divorce.
She said, “Reese. You are letting yourself be loved by a dog who has not stopped loving the man who loved him first. That is the most generous arrangement I have heard of in a long time.”
I have been thinking about that.
I do not think Buster loves me less because he loves Arthur.
I think Buster has shown me what love is supposed to look like, when the person you love is gone but you are not.
Buster is on his bed in my living room right now.
It is 11:30 PM on a Tuesday in late September. He is asleep. His paws are clean.
In about fifteen minutes, he is going to stand up, walk to the kitchen, push through the doggy door, and walk a mile and a half through the dark streets of Madison to a flat granite marker in a small Catholic cemetery.
He is going to lie on the grass next to it for ninety-eight minutes.
Then he is going to come home.
I am going to be awake when he gets back.
I am going to sit on the rug.
I am going to put my hand on him.
He is going to thump his tail.
We are going to keep going.
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