MythBusters Inspired Dog Names

The MythBusters crew dubbed their crash test dummy Buster. He was first introduced in season one during the Exploding Toilet Myth, and has been putting his existence on the line since then, requiring extensive rebuilds due to damage from falling from great heights and intense forces that he is exposed to, as well as being fitted with adaptive equipment such as clamps and shock gauges. He was even fitted with a pneumatic system to allow him to punch sharks for the Shark Week special! Buster was also the name of a military sniffer dog from the UK who put life and limb on the line for soldiers in war zones such as Iraq, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, completing five tours of duty in these areas. Buster was a Springer Spaniel. Sniffer dogs in Britain, known officially as arms explosives search dogs are typically recruited when they are between one and three years of age and are required to undertake intense training for approximately six months before they are sent on missions. Buster is credited with saving over a thousand lives in the war zones, which he did by seeking hidden weapons and revealing their locations to his handler, Flight Sergeant Will Barrow through five tours of duty, as well as working both the commonwealth games in Manchester and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. 

In March of 2003, the talented spaniel located an arsenal of weapons believed to belong to extremists, which were hidden behind a tin wall in a town called Safwan in Southern Iraq. After the cache of weapons was found and confiscated and many of the extremists were arrested, attacks ceased. For this action, Buster was recognized with a Dickin Medal for Outstanding Gallantry on December 9^th of that year, presented to him by Princess Alexandra, an honor that equates to a Victoria’s Cross for animals. He was retired in 2012, the same year he was honored with the Crufts Friends for Life award, and he went to live out the remainder of his life at the home of Sergeant Barrow and his family. The bestselling book outlining his exploits, titled Buster: The dog who saved a thousand lives, was written by his handler and released in January of 2015. When Buster died just a few months later, a memorial to the canine hero was unveiled in the garden of Royal Air Force Waddington, where the BBC quoted Sergeant Barrow as stating “This is not about saying goodbye to Buster with a memorial, it’s more like saying hello forever.”