Canine Charms: Markus Zusak on Rescuing a Dog and Naming It After a Character in His Fiction

That night in November 2009, Mika was scanning the internet for abandoned dogs. My obvious advice for anyone approaching those animal websites is that whatever you do, if you’re only fifty percent sure, don’t look. Once you’ve looked, you’re gone. You might as well start buying the food, the leashes, the beds, the toys, and finding your nearest vet. The more intelligent among you might also start looking up pet insurance.

When Mika called out that she’d found us a dog, the dilemma was immediately twofold. First, God love her as I do, she’s good at knowing what she wants. Second, she has a knack for finding problem dogs – the ones no one else can handle.

A small but significant backstory is that we met each other overseas. It was the first time I’d ever been traveling, and Mika was beautiful confidence. For years, she’d often gone back to Poland, where she was born, and where she lived until she was six.

We’re in 1998 at this time. She told me about her dog. Tyja.

(Pronounced Teeya.)

A Rottweiler German Shepherd cross. Of all the combinations! And Tyja’s command of her surrounds, and her abilities in the art of ferocity, let’s say, were the stuff of suburban legend.

When people went to Mika’s parents’ house in Edensor Park and dared to enter the backyard, they first had to survive the Tyja test—one hell of an examination. Apparently, the dog would circle you. If she liked you she’d give you a warning look, then nonchalantly wander away. If she didn’t like you, she’d growl and bare her teeth. A clear and present directive—Get your arse back inside.

After which, she’d follow you to the door, and once behind it again, if you gambled on reaching out your hand, she’d thunder into the security screen.

As for me?

What do you do when you meet a beautiful girl on your first trip away and fall completely, maddeningly in love, and you’re coming back home before she is? You agree to take some of her clothes home, risking drugs and hidden firearms, and last days in Bangkok or Singapore.

Having passed the customs challenge with flying colors, I arrived home and called her mum and dad, arranging delivery, and, by default, to meet the legendary dog.

To be honest, I wasn’t overly worried, even if I should have been. I’d subscribed from a young age to the idea that if you didn’t show fear to a dog and took a commonsense approach, you’d be okay ninety-nine percent of the time…although from everything I’d been told, Tyja was a one-percenter.

Like most car trips in Sydney, Mika’s place was forty-five minutes to an hour away, and I was more than an hour early. I didn’t park directly outside the house, but further down the cul-de-sac. When I walked up the driveway, I saw Tyja behind the gate, where she barked and showcased her teeth. This dog was here for business. I rang the doorbell nervously, for many more reasons than one.

When I went inside, Mika’s mum and dad were very welcoming, a house with slate and light. We talked for a while, about traveling, and Mika, and I tentatively ate the fruit they’d brought out, until they asked the inevitable question.

Did I want to go out and meet Tyja? Now, what was I going to say?

Look, I really love your daughter, but I don’t have the guts to meet your ferocious dog?

I don’t think so.

This was a time to prove myself. For both physical and mental fortitude.

When we opened the flyscreen, Tyja was further away, around the side of the house. For whatever reason, I was a stride or two ahead, and when Tyja saw me, she stopped. She studied me from a distance for scarcely more than a second, then she dug her ample paws into the ground and came careering in my direction.

Big and black and muscular and gold, she launched herself through the air. She hit me—and started licking. She crowded against my legs the way only a dog can do, and she snuffed and pawed and continued. She licked my forearms and hands, those teeth both felt and suggested, but with excitement rather than terror. She lay down and flopped on her back. I crouched and rubbed her stomach.

To this day, Mika’s mum, Halina, says she thought I was about to die. That sight, of Tyja midair, claws open. She’d never seen that dog react to anyone like that, but to be fair, I’m not deluded. I’m sure it was all in the scent. She could probably smell Mika from the laundry bag the moment I walked up the driveway.

Still, from that day onward, Tyja and I were tight—and as the story goes, when I left the house that afternoon, Halina rang Mika in Warsaw, and said, “I just met your future husband.”

Both Halina and Tyja were right.

Up in that very future, the night Mika called across the hallway, Tyja had been gone for quite some time, but a similar dog was looming.

“Come and have a look,” she said, leaning in at the dog on screen. I told her I’d be there soon, that I was finishing reading through a chapter. It wasn’t necessarily the plan, but later, when I came to bed, Mika was already asleep.

I was forced to look in the morning, though, when she shoved her laptop on the table. I was caught off guard in the kitchen, and there he was, in front of me.

This dog was something else.

He was brindle and dark and wild-looking. One of his earth-colored ears was flopped irresistibly forward. Four months old and pouting. Black lips and disarming eyes. You could see he was half hyena-like, but loaded with mottle and character. He had fifty-two grades of brown.

“Oh, shit,’”I said.

“I know.”

I knew that usage well.

I know, and its accomplice—that smile. The sound of it, next to me, alive.

She peered closer at the image. “Isn’t he gorgeous?”

“Well, he’s definitely something, but I’m not sure I’d call it gorgeous.”

“Oh, come on, he’s beautiful!”

“Oh, yeah.” I couldn’t help myself. “Maybe in a just-got- out-of-jail sort of way.”

“Stop that!” She slapped my arm.

“Okay, yes,” I agreed, ‘he’s beautiful.”

For a roller coaster of seconds, I tried to find anything I could to make it all go away, and soon enough, I did: Reuben. The name above the photo said Reuben. My first three published books had a central character named Ruben in them. It was even in the title of the second one, Fighting Ruben Wolfe—spelled differently, but still a Reuben.

“Hey,” I said, “I can’t have a dog with that name. Remember Fighting Ruben Wolfe? I can’t have a dog with the same name as a character in one of my books.” It was pretty solid reasoning, I thought. “How egotistical is that?”

But Mika?

Many steps ahead, as usual. Try winning an argument with this woman. You can’t.

‘You’re thinking about this all wrong!’ I was sitting in kitchen quicksand. She was talking in exclamation marks, and warming to the task. ‘Don’t you see, it’s a sign! You and this dog are simpatico.” Italics now as well. “It’s meant to be….”

She zoomed in on the photo and we dived inside the animal, and all his deep-dark browns. “Anyway, we can always change his name.”

Covering every angle—standard.

“Good thinking,” I said, “that solves everything!”

Throughout the day, there were more conversations (the usual—whether now was really the time), but we looked at each other and knew. Mika had long decided, and I was complicit now, too.

By the time the clock hit midnight, I was up again with Bridge of Clay, getting nowhere, and thinking about the dog. Mika was still up reading when I came to bed and capitulated. “Okay, let’s have one last look.”

It was like she was sitting on a spring.

She walked to her desk and came marching back, with the image of Reuben in her arms. We took that dreadful leap. “Come onnn,” she said—quite cutely, I admit. “How can we say no to that face?”

This time, as I examined the flopped-over ear, the wild in each eye, and the mutinous shades of brown, I deciphered a new message as well—totally fictitious on my part, naturally—of Who would have me but you?

Then call it what you will. Fatigue. Recklessness.

I leaned back, half-laughed, and relented.

There was a great big sigh of no return, and I knew he was on his way. “Okay,” slipped out of my mouth. Such a simple, perfect word, with so many ramifications. It wasn’t that the last say belonged to me, but such choices need total agreement. This was over but only beginning.

Within another fifteen minutes, I was pulled down hard into sleep, and to dreams like twitching dog dreams. There were facts I knew to be immutable: Reuben was out there somewhere, but he’d be here, with us, next day.

And next day came—and he was.

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From Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth) by Markus Zusak. Copyright © 2025 by Markus Zusak. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers