by Jon Katz
Some factors—his litter, his early training and socialization, genetics—predate his joining my household. The environment I provided, my own training attempts, my personality may also have had an impact.
My choice for Orson was only that: my choice for my dog. Animal lovers have strong opinions on such issues; some will likely condemn my decision.
I believe this kind of choice is intensely personal; there are simply no universal rules. When all is said and done, we are, each of us, on our own.
If your dog shows behavioral problems, such as arousal or aggression, please consult a vet, trainer, or veterinary behaviorist. Many dogs can be successfully retrained, reoriented, or re-homed. I selected a particular option; there are others.
Please also remember, however, that millions of Americans—many of them children—are bitten by dogs each year, some very seriously. This is a moral issue relating to people and dogs that, sadly, many of us who love dogs may have to address.
Read on for an excerpt from
Going Home
Finding Peace When Pets Die
by Jon Katz
Published by Villard
Introduction
It was my birthday, August 8, 2005. I had just brought Orson home from the vet’s office, where he had been put down.
My other dog, Rose, who reads me better than any other living creature, froze when I got out of the truck. From her post on the hill with the sheep, she watched me take Orson’s body out of the truck, her eyes never straying from the unwieldy package.
Rose herded the sheep over to their feeder, then turned, came quickly down to greet me, and sniffed Orson through the large plastic bag the vet had given me. She had spent every day of her life with Orson and was almost always around him. I wondered how she would react. She would smell his death, of course, and know it instantly.
As detached as a crime-scene investigator, she took note of the bag, and of Orson’s smell. She gave the sheep a stern warning look over her shoulder and fell into place alongside me, as if she had expected this to happen. Nothing surprised Rose. I loved her for being so adaptable. It was as if she was telling me, “Hey, life goes on. Let’s get this done and get back to work.”
The late-afternoon clouds swept over the mountains and cast the hill in shadow. With Rose by my side, I made my way toward the top of the pasture where a handyman had dug a grave. Orson was the heaviest thing I have ever had to carry, in so many different ways. In that bag, along with the limp body of my dead dog, I carried a piece of my heart.
I had to stop two or three times—to put him down, catch my breath, swat the flies away, wipe my face with a handkerchief, gulp from the bottle of water in my back pocket. Each time, Rose waited for me. My back and legs hurt and I was in shock. Orson had died with his head in my lap, looking up at me, and I’d felt as if I might come apart. I didn’t. I didn’t want him to pick up on my fear or sadness at the end of his life, so I just smiled and said, “Thank you.”
In 2000, a loving breeder in Texas told me she was seeking a home for a border collie who had failed to make it as a show dog. He was intense but intelligent, she said. He was beautiful. He had issues. I brought him into my life for reasons that are still not clear to me.
Orson did not turn out to be an ordinary dog in any respect. He crashed into my life like a meteor, and was so charismatic, rebellious, and explosive a personality that I abandoned my life as a mystery writer and media critic, began taking sheepherding lessons, bought Bedlam Farm, and ended up with a menagerie: donkeys, sheep, steers, and, for a while, some goats. I loved Orson dearly, although he drove me crazy from the moment I first picked him up at Newark Airport. Animal lovers know that troubled creatures are sometimes the ones we love most.
On the farm, Orson wreaked havoc, which was his dominant characteristic. He dug under and leapt over fences. His notion of sheepherding was to grab the largest ewe and pull her over onto the ground. He was intensely arousable. And, unfortunately, overprotective. Orson nipped at workmen, package-delivery people, neighbors. He bit three people, including a child. My beloved dog defied treatment from the best and most expensive veterinarians, holistic practitioners, trainers, and animal communicators. He was simply beyond my ability to repair or control.
Still, Orson taught me a lot about my own limits, and he also sparked a process that made me not just a writer but a writer about dogs, farms, and rural living. He was the dog who changed my life.
One of the many gifts Orson led me to was Rose, another border collie. Working with Orson, I came to love border collies and was mesmerized by the rituals and practices of herding sheep with them.
I got Rose when she was just eight weeks old. A small, beautiful, black-and-white creature, she was, from the first, my partner on the farm, helping me with herding and lambing. She battled coyotes and pigs, fought off rabid feral cats and skunks, and twice saved my life. Each time, I had fallen on the ice during an awful winter storm and knocked myself out. I would have frozen to death in the bitter cold if Rose had not awakened me by nipping on my ears.
Like Orson, Rose has had a profound impact on my life, making it possible, in many ways, for me to live on a farm. She and Orson were as inseparable as they were different.
Orson gave me so much, and I repaid him by ending his life. He was troubled, damaged, and I spent years trying to fix him, to no avail. I talked to my vet and we agreed that he should be euthanized. There was nothing left to try, no more money to spend. It was an agonizing decision, but I had to trust that it was the right one.
It took me a while to get Orson up the hill that day. Rose no longer paid overt attention to the bag, yet I could tell she was aware of it. She was always with me when there was work to do, pleasant or not.
The grave site at the top of the pasture was a beautiful spot, with a commanding view of the farm and the hills and valley beyond.
Orson would love it up there, I hoped. I dug the hole deeper to prevent predators from getting into the grave. Sweat soaked my clothes now, and the flies feasted on my arms and face. Ever vigilant, Rose sat nearby watching me and keeping an eye on the sheep below.
After I buried Orson carefully, I placed the marker, a flat slab of stone carved with his name, at the head of his grave. I shook my head. I wanted to cry but could not, though the pain I felt was piercing.
I had lost dogs before, but not this dog, and not in this way. This one really hurt.
I was awash in guilt, grief, and loss. And I was alone. I didn’t know how to deal with the pain I was feeling, or how to mourn this dog, whom I loved beyond words and owed so much. He had been such an integral part of my life—not only had he inspired me to change my life for the better, but he had lived each of those changes with me. We had traveled all over the country together—on book tours, to herding trials, even to the University of Minnesota, where I taught for a few months.
But even so, I was embarrassed by my grief. Perhaps that shame was due to my gender and a long-held tendency to hide emotions and bury feelings. I didn’t feel like calling up my friends or the people I worked with to tell them I was in mourning over a dog. What would they think of me? Human beings died every day in the world, and suffered illness, catastrophes, and great misfortune. What right did I have to fall to pieces over a border collie? I heard my father’s voice clearly: Suck it up.
I did not want to be one of those silly people who lost themselves in the lives of their dogs and cats. I didn’t want people to see how I felt. I told myself that Orson was just a dog, an animal. It wasn’t like he was human. Yet my grief could hardly have been worse. I admitted to myself that I had lost members of my family for whom I had not felt that much sorrow. It was a shocking thing to concede.
But the truth is that my relationship with Orson was simpler, more productive, and even more loving than many of the relationships within my human family. Losing a border collie is not like losing a parent, yet I felt closer to this crazy dog than I ever felt to my own father. And I hear this so of
ten from other dog owners as well. How does one make sense of that?
Grief doesn’t always come with perspective. It doesn’t differentiate between the things we feel and the things we ought to feel. The love of a dog can be a powerful thing, in part, I think, because animals are a blank canvas upon which we can—and do—paint almost anything. Dogs enter our lives and imprint themselves in ways that people, and our complex relationships with them, cannot.
Maybe it would have been easier if I’d had his body cremated. Briefly, I regretted my choice. Cremation seemed simpler, more private. The process would have been more indirect and somehow neater. His body would be gone, returned to me as ashes that I could scatter in the woods or up on the hill. I told myself that there wouldn’t have been as much mourning required, but I knew that wasn’t the case.
I poured more dirt onto his grave and then tamped down the earth with heavy rocks to keep it secure. I closed my eyes, felt the cooling evening breeze slide up the hill, and offered a moment of silence. Rose watched me until I was done and then went down the hill and back to the sheep, who had drifted somewhere she didn’t want them to go for reasons I would never know.
When I came down the hill, I was determined not to tell anyone how I felt. I didn’t want to appear sentimental or, God forbid, weak. I wanted to move on. I wanted to keep perspective. I went to work. But all I could think about was Orson. I couldn’t focus. I had to talk to someone.
I called my daughter and told her Orson was dead.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “How are you?”
“Okay,” I answered.
“It must have been hard,” she said.
“No,” I told her quickly. “Not really. I made the right decision. I’m comfortable with it.”
And I wasn’t completely off. In a sense, I was comfortable with my decision. It was a good decision, well considered and thought through. Orson had bitten people, and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t do it again. I had spent many thousands of dollars on dog trainers, psychics, pills, shamans, holistic practitioners, veterinary druggists, and acupuncture. I even ordered him some calming medicine from China. Perhaps I ought to have taken it myself. There wasn’t anything else I could do for Orson.
Though I believed I had made the right decision, I had no notion of how to process my grief. I didn’t know how to say goodbye, how to mourn the things I lost. I didn’t know how to show that pain to other human beings—an essential element of healthy grieving.
I resisted telling the people I loved how much I hurt, how much I mourned for this troubled dog. There is a community of grief where countless millions have been, dwell, or will go. When it comes to animals, that community is vast; its shared sense of pain and loss is palpable and deep. But what is it that makes the community more than something intangible, more than an idea or a notion? How do we find it? Join it? Make it real?
I think we can become a part of this healing community by acknowledging grief and loss and pain. By asking for help. By opening up. By coming to consciousness, permitting the loss and welcoming grief, revealing it, respecting it. By understanding the loss without succumbing to it.
By not allowing myself to grieve Orson and discuss my loss, I skated over the experience and failed to see its significance. The death of Orson was a watershed moment in my life. It deserved attention and respect. My reaction to his death said much about me: how closed off I was, how vulnerable, how little I really grasped of my own life. I was afraid of my grief and wouldn’t allow myself to see why his death mattered so much.
I see it better now. Orson entered my life at a time of great need. And though he had his problems, he also led me out of a place I did not want to be and guided me to a new chapter in my life. He brought me to my farm. He brought me to a life that I loved, and a person with whom I loved sharing it. He taught me limits and boundaries. He gave me perspective. He forced me to learn how to respect myself and my own decisions—a great gift. All this I came to see in time.
Perhaps it is time for this particular form of grief to come out of the closet and into the open. The loss of a beloved pet can be painful, even devastating. Mourning isn’t comfortable, but it’s a natural part of the grieving process and helps one move on.
No one is foolish for grieving for a dog or cat. A pet is rarely “just a dog” or “just a cat”; he is often an integral part of one’s life, providing a loving emotional connection that has great meaning in a complex and cruel world.
I decided to write this book, sad reader—and if you’re reading this, you probably are sad—because I thought it might be helpful.
I want to help animal lovers grieve when their pain is great.
And find perspective when it is hard to come by.
And celebrate the lives of their dogs and cats as well as mourn them.
And then move on.
My wish in writing this book is, in part, to convey the idea that the loss of a beloved dog or cat or horse does not have to be the end of something. It can be the beginning, a process as well as a loss. It is a gateway to the next experience.
Aristotle wrote that to truly know how to love something, you have to lose something. In that way, every animal I have lost has been a gift.
I want to pass along what I have learned.
I hope it helps.
To Brian McLendon,
for his unwavering faith in my work
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my editor, Bruce Tracy, for insisting that I had to tell Orson’s story, and for guiding me so carefully and sympathetically through its writing.
Thanks to Richard Abate for fighting hard for me. I thank Dennis Ambrose and Ed Cohen for their careful copyediting and proofreading of my work.
I don’t really know how to appropriately thank the usual suspects: my wife, Paula Span, who has hung on to what she’s taken to calling “the runaway train that is Katz,” and my daughter, Emma Span, for her love, humor, decency, and great mind.
I thank Anthony Armstrong for giving me the gift of real friendship, even in middle age, when I had begun to despair of finding it, and for his hard work and artistry in restoring Bedlam Farm. His wife, Holly Beth, and daughter, Ida Jane, have provided me with love, support, and good times.
I appreciate Peter Hanks for his photographic vision, which has helped bring my work to life, and for selling me Elvis, my Brown Swiss steer. Thanks also to Jane, Robin, and Dean Hanks for their support and encouragement since I landed in the country.
I am grateful for the friendship of Becky MacLachlan; Meg, Rob, Hunter, and Elizabeth Southerland; and Bill and Maria Heinrich. I am grateful to Jesse and Ralph Corey.
Life on Bedlam Farm would not be possible without my friend and helper Annie DiLeo, the Goat Lady of Cossayuna.
I am fortunate to have the friendship and wisdom of Lesley Nase, who has opened my heart and mind to the spiritual world of animals.
Thanks, too, to Stanley Mickiewicz, a friend and the proprietor of Bedlam Wood Restoration; to Ginny Tremblay, for first showing me Bedlam Farm and being so good a friend; to Alice and Harvey Hahn for helping care for this great old farmhouse; to Pat Freund for introducing me to the wonderful world of donkeys; to Nancy Higby and her Dirt Divas for restoring the gardens of Bedlam Farm. Two great dog breeders, Deanna Veselka of Wildblue Border Collies, and Pam Leslie and Heather Waite of Hillside Labradors, are responsible for the wonderful dogs who have so shaped my life.
Thanks to the veterinarians of Borador Animal Hospital and the Granville Small Animal Veterinary Service, especially Mary Menard, Whitney Pressler, and Jeff Meyers. And to Stephanie Mills-Holtzman. And to the Granville Large Animal Service.
I am grateful to Dr. Bernard Rawlins and Dr. Dan Richman of the New York Hospital for Special Surgery, and to Kathy Metzger of the Vermont Sports Medicine Center, for helping me move again.
Thanks to John Sweenor for teaching me the beauty of ATVs, American cars, and aggressive tires.
And, of course, I won’t ever be able to re
ally express my gratitude to Orson, the dog who launched me on this great journey, a debt I could never repay.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JON KATZ has written fifteen books—six novels and nine works of nonfiction—including A Dog Year, The Dogs of Bedlam Farm, The New Work of Dogs, and Katz on Dogs. A two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, he writes a column about dogs for the online magazine Slate, and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, GQ, and the AKC Gazette. He cohosts an award-winning show, Dog Talk, on Northeast Public Radio. Katz lives on Bedlam Farm in upstate New York with his wife, Paula Span, and his dogs, sheep, donkeys, barn cat, irritable rooster Winston, and three hens. He can be e-mailed at [email protected].
ALSO BY JON KATZ
Katz on Dogs
The Dogs of Bedlam Farm
The New Work of Dogs
A Dog Year
Geeks
Running to the Mountain
Virtuous Reality
Media Rants
Sign Off
Death by Station Wagon
The Family Stalker
The Last Housewife
The Fathers’ Club
Death Row
Copyright © 2006 by Jon Katz
Excerpt from Going Home copyright © 2011 by Jon Katz.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
VILLARD and “V” CIRCLED Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.villard.com
Photographs by Peter Hanks
