A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life

by Jon Katz

  Its healthy to remember, dealing with dogs and other animals, that we are largely ignorant. There were parts to this dog that I would never understand. For instance: If Orson could befriend, or at least tolerate, a grumpy rooster, why was he so hostile to gentle, enthusiastic service and therapy dogs? It seems an odd thing to say, but over time, it simply became clear: He didnt like exuberant, social dogs like Labs and golden retrievers. He didnt like Seeing Eye dogs. He didnt like puppies. Almost any dog that made people go awwww just set him off. The strange thing about this trait was, I loved him for it. Service and therapy dogs and their owners do great work; they deserve praise and appreciation. But in the same way the official class bad boy often resents the overachievers, Orson disliked nice dogs, particularly if they wore one of those stenciled vests that said Therapy. When I was in an anthropomorphic mood, I reasoned that he disdained dogs whose circumstances allowed them to be nicer than he was. Perhaps they were the dogs he wished he could be. One Sunday afternoon I took him to a reading in Saratoga. He loved the attention he got at book events, although applause would sometimes arouse him and spark a spate of barking. At this store, a blind woman showed up with Maggie, her beloved Seeing Eye dog, a true sweetheart. In seconds, while I was distracted by conversation, Orson slipped his collar and was running Maggie down the aisles. I could hear barking and yelping at the far end of the store. Maggies owner looked bewildered, calling to her dog, saying over and over, She never runs off. Where could she be? Hurrying to the store entrance, I saw that Orson had chased Maggie right out the front door-while it was held open by a customer, apparently-and under a car in the mall parking lot. Maggie looked traumatized. Orson, barking and circling, appeared to be having a good time. I was mortified. What kind of miserable creature goes after a Seeing Eye dog? Theyre out here, I yelled back into the store. Theyre just playing. Then, cursing, I kneeled down and grabbed Maggies halter. Orson, chastened by my tongue-lashing, slithered along the ground. Maggie looked rattled but eager to get back to her post; owner and dog were happily reunited. Orson, after numerous muttered death threats, lay down next to me while I read and talked and signed. But he never took his eyes off Maggie. How do you love a dog like that? And, more interesting, why?

  People who love dogs often talk about a lifetime dog. Id heard the phrase a hundred times before I came to recognize its significance. Lifetime dogs intersect with our lives with particular impact; theyre dogs we love in especially powerful, sometimes inexplicable, ways. While we may cherish other pets, we may never feel that particular kind of connection with any of the rest. For lack of a better term, they are dogs we fall in love with, and for whom we often invent complex emotional histories. You could argue that until the end of ones life with dogs, it isnt possible to say which was your once-in-a-lifetime dog. In my experience, though, people do usually know, if theyre fortunate enough to have one. People often need to see their dogs as guarding or healing or loving them and them alone-as in the dog that pines for its owner for years, or crawls hundreds of miles across the moors to get home. Ive always resisted that idea. I want my dogs to love and feel safe with others besides me. I suspect that when dogs cant, weve mistaken anxiety and confusion for love. Its not unusual for us to encourage and reinforce the behaviors we want in our dogs, then attribute our own needs and motives to them. The lifetime dog, I suspect, is an unconscious, maybe even unwilling, partner in this process. Yet theres no denying the degree to which Orson and I bonded. He was always with me, when he could be. And I always had him with me, when I could. I even took him halfway across the country when I taught at the University of Minnesota one fall. I worried about Orson all the time. It pained me greatly when he suffered, and I was exhilarated when he seemed happy. It felt like a pure relationship of unquestioned love, unbreakable loyalty, and the absence of judgment. Who knows whether he felt anything like this? But because he couldnt speak, I could speak for him, imagine a personality for him, whether it was accurate or not. His spirit seemed parallel to mine. There was a link, a connection, that I couldnt explain. But I felt it nonetheless. So when I sensed that something central in my life had changed since Orson arrived, I was right and wrong. As Id settled into a suburban white-collar life, almost unthinkingly, Id drifted away from a part of myself. When Orson arrived, he began reconnecting me to that other self; it was obvious as soon as I set foot on the farm and felt such joy, fulfillment, and contentment. I doubt he did this by design. Its less awkward to speak in terms of his sparking something within me that was long dormant. Yet no other dog I ever loved could have done this, or could do it again. Orsons pain touched me; his plight inspired me; his love comforted me. When I came home and he threw himself upon me, my heart rose up. Sometimes I was so moved, I wanted to cry. Without Orson, I would not be here. The happy and unhappy truths inherent in that realization will intrigue, plague, and haunt me to the end of my time. On the early fall day the trailer from Pennsylvania arrived, and the sheep and donkey rushed out into the pasture toward the lush green grass, Orson and I soon followed. He was on a long leash, but when he looked at the sheep, that old gleam showed in his eyes. Hey, I hissed at him, not wanting the moment to be spoiled. Settle down. I walked him up the hill-perhaps a quarter of a mile-and then we turned and looked out over the sprawling valley below us. Hawks circled vigilantly overhead. Carol the donkey was gnawing happily on the bark of an old apple tree below, and the sheep had begun serious grazing, the trauma and discomfort of a long journey already forgotten. I leaned back into one of the Adirondack chairs Id perched at the crest of the hill, savoring the sight. Orson put his paw on my knee, and licked my face. I slipped the leash from his collar. He looked at me expectantly for directions, but I had none to give. I was suffused with gratitude for his having led me to this unimaginably beautiful place, the rumpled, balding grandson of impoverished Russian immigrants sitting atop an expanse that had sustained farmers decades before the first battles of the Civil War. Youre free, I said. He froze for a moment, stared at me, then took off. Animals free to move in their natural environments are a beautiful and rare sight. Theres little in the animal world to compare with the graceful lope of a border collie with work to do and lots of room to do it. When border collies approach sheep, theyre supposed to break wide of the flock, circling behind them to push them toward the shepherd. Orson was more prone to dashing right at the sheep, scattering them in a melee of fear and confusion. In nearly two years of trekking out to Carolyns farm, in hundreds of contacts with sheep, hed never managed that classic semicircular outrun behind them, except in empty fields away from sheep. Sometimes he would begin, but always, something inside him would snap. Hed turn directly toward the sheep, so that herding became chasing. It was Orsons plight, really: He could never quite escape himself, any more than I could. But certain animals in certain situations can sense an occasion and enter the spirit of the moment, especially if they know and read their human companions well. I was feeling exhilarated that day. Walking to the top of the hill-my hill-and looking down at the farm-my farm, with my newly arrived livestock-was a landmark moment. Could a dog as attached to me as Orson was fail to sense that? Freed, he broke to the right and began a beautiful, bounding run far wide of the sheep, almost as if we were swept up in the pride and accomplishment of the moment-his moment as much as mine-and were determined to honor it. A classic outrun, Discovery Channel stuff. I rose to my feet to see it better. He didnt look back at me, as he usually did. I kept my mouth shut, as I often dont. He ran off the eastern fence, then down alongside it. The sheep, recognizing the old adversary they usually fled from, raised their heads and watched for a few moments. Then they began gathering into a knot. When Orson cantered below them, they turned and, as any shepherd would want them to do, began walking slowly up the hill toward me, Orson behind them. He looked especially handsome on that September day, his lean, muscular frame racing along without any visible exertion, his glossy black and white fur shimmering. Another dog, one of the Labs, would have been panting by now, slowing
after running hard in the warm sun. But Orson hardly seemed to be straining. In a few minutes, the sheep were close to the top of the hill, grazing near me, watching him. Orson ran up alongside them to me. I dropped to my knees and shouted praise and hallelujahs. What a breakthrough, I thought. How I wish Carolyn or Paula-or somebody-could have seen it. How much hard work had gone into this simple run, how many training sessions in the cold and heat and mud, how many bug bites and frozen toes. It was a remarkable triumph of commitment and training. And wed have great moments like this, I knew, on our farm, with our sheep in our pastures and hills. Wasnt this why we were here, why we had come? I didnt suspect for a moment that hed never do an outrun like that again. Id never understand why.

  Rose

  CHAPTER THREE The Rise of Rose When I first saw Rose, she was clinging to her breeders shoulder in the passenger terminal at Denvers vast international airport. A tiny black-and-white pup fresh from a quiet farm, she was trembling with fear at all the noise and commotion around her. And her day was only going to get worse. She was soon stuffed into a fabric animal holder, electronically wanded and groped by airport security, then jammed into a small carry-on crate pushed beneath my airplane seat, headed for New Jersey. The crate, airline personnel repeatedly warned me, could not be opened during the flight. I could only imagine what four or five hours of roaring jet engines were doing to so sensitive a dog. When nobody was looking, I leaned down, unfastened the container, and stroked her quivering head. When we arrived in Newark, the din of suburban New Jersey-sirens, traffic, power mowers, people-unnerved her further. The first time I took her out into the backyard, she burrowed into an opening under the fence and wouldnt budge. I had to pull her out. For days she cowered, rushing outside to hide among the garden greenery and peer out, then darting back inside to take refuge in her crate. She didnt eliminate for a good twenty-four hours. She was all nerves, hypersensitive to sound and movement around her, so anxious that I worried she might suffer permanent trauma of some kind. After a few days, she settled a bit and began paying a little attention to me and the other dogs. She seemed to feel safer. Still, I wondered whether a dog as anxious as this could ever herd sheep. Rose spent her first months in New Jersey, from which base we made frequent treks out to the sheep in Pennsylvania. Then came time for the big move. I took three border collies to the farm-Rose, Homer, and Orson. Homer was sweet-tempered and affectionate, but struggling with Orsons intensity and dominance, as well as my own impatience and inexperience with training. Id hoped that introducing a new puppy would bolster his confidence, his position in the pack; it wasnt working out that way. In New Jersey he had grown attached to Max, my neighbors ten-year-old. The rest of the family adored him as well. In that household, he had plenty of attention and no trouble from competitors. While Homers visits there had been brief, I suspected even then that one day he would stay. A lovelier setting upstate couldnt resolve his problems. But the new puppy was instantly transformed. On the farm, Rose had come home. She was more peaceful and at ease than Id ever seen her, especially after the sheep arrived. It was as if shed been born here. In New Jersey, she was a dog out of her element; on the farm, shed found her place. It was intriguing to see how the dogs took to this new environment, or didnt. Orson, thorny as ever, had varied responses. He loved walking with me, running through the woods and meadows, chasing chipmunks and digging into groundhog holes. But he seemed most at ease alone with me, inside the farmhouse. Homer rarely seemed comfortable on the farm. The running and herding seemed to tire him; he often ended the day limping and sore. He was shorter than Orson and his frame heavier than Roses, so running took more of a toll on him. He still gave a wide berth to Orson, who rarely let him near me. Having absorbed this lesson, Homer became the only dog Id ever owned who didnt usually want to be in the same room with me. Curiously, Rose was completely unafraid of Orson; she deferred to him but was unrattled. In fact, at night, when all the dogs were settled, Rose tiptoed around the house collecting everybodys bones, toys, and rawhide remnants, ferrying them, piece by piece, to her own crate. She rarely chewed them, but she liked to collect them, one last round of work before sleep. She was the only dog who could take anything of Orsons and escape a drubbing. When it came to Homer, she was as dominant as Orson. Soon, the poor guy had two dogs pushing him around, stealing his bones and toys. My dog life had been fluid lately, to say the least. Homer had come to fill the ache after Julius and Stanley died, to be part of my growing interest in herding. Rose, descended from a strong herding line, had come to help with the farm I was about to acquire and to be a good-natured companion for Homer to feel superior to. Little of this was unfolding as planned. In the fall, despite pangs of loss and guilt, I gave Homer to Max and his family, where he still lives happily. And little Rose practically took over.

  Rose was the opposite of a mellow Lab. Aware of every sound and movement, almost incapable of relaxing, she never stopped working-moving things around, darting back and forth along the pasture fence, keeping track of me-even when she wasnt on duty. She was interested in people only as they related to work. If you walked into the pasture with her and let her steer the sheep, even once, then you were her friend. Otherwise, she had no use for you. She had scant interest in being scratched, cuddled, or hugged. Food mattered little. Apart from those that involved chasing, like balls and Frisbees, neither did toys. If she never was quite at rest, she seemed cheerful and content. And why not? How many border collies had a score of sheep just outside the kitchen window? My plan was to work rigorously with Orson every day-rain, snow, heat, or cold-and to raise Rose as a working farm dog, which I suspected I would soon need. Id bought Bedlam Farm for many reasons, some having little to do with dogs. But one factor important to me was the chance to live and work with dogs in the right environment, without suburban restrictions and distractions, with meadows and pastures and sheep. Orson had been somehow damaged in his early years; I hoped that working together, he and I could repair much of that damage, if not all of it. That was the goal, perhaps the fantasy. I would keep working with him until the world made sense; he would love and trust me and, in the process, heal. He wouldnt suffer the fate of so many troubled creatures-to be abandoned. Somebody would be there. Somebody would care. We wouldnt give up on each other. Training with Orson had to be consistent, not something we did when I had time but something we did every single day, something built into our lives together. It would take a lot of work. We would keep at it until we had gone as far as we could go. The most serious training occurred first thing in the morning. I left the other dogs inside the house or in the backyard fence, while Orson and I made for the pasture gate. He understood early on that this meant wed be working together; it had become a part of the day that he looked forward to with excitement. When I unlatched the gate, he exploded, rushing around in circles, barking and scarfing up sheep poop, spooking the donkeys and sending the sheep to the farthest corner of the pasture. To overcome even one of these unwanted reactions-the circling, the noise, the unpleasant snacking, which had even more unpleasant consequences later in the day-would be a triumph. Our work didnt proceed steadily and predictably, not ever. One morning in the late fall, the sheep were gathered near the feeder, waiting. It was growing bitter, and the animals needed corn and grain for energy. So I went into the barn with Orson and poured grain into two black rubber buckets. Delivering it wasnt as simple a procedure as it might seem. Normally placid ruminants, sheep turn wild when they see or smell food. Theyll plow into one another-and anything else in the way, including people-to get to grain. I had one bad leg, and worsening troubles with the other, and more than once Id been banged into, knocked over, nearly trampled by charging sheep. On a few occasions it had been seriously frightening; it was often painful. The better approach was to keep the animals back until you could place their food in a feeder, then step away. Orson, I thought, would be good at this. The sheep were afraid of him, understandably, and would stay away. He didnt need to execute any moves; he could simply stay near me.
I opened the pasture gate and he came in, excited, expectant. A good rule to follow with sheep and border collies, Ive learned, is that a dog too excited to hear you, or obey simple commands like Lie down, is probably too excited to work. My training practice is to remove an overwrought dog until he calms down, then bring him back once hes settled. That way, the dog learns that hell get to sheep when hes calm, not frenzied. I had been working on this with Orson for more than two years, and this morning I made him lie down outside the gate, and then lie down again once we came inside. The sheep were bleating, edging closer to me and the buckets. I told Orson to lie down, and then to stay. He had rushed up looking for sheep poop, but after Id called him two or three times, he came back and lay down. Then I trudged uphill to the feeder with the two heavy buckets. It had been frigid for days, alternately snowing and then, when the temperature warmed up, sleeting. Now the icy ground was treacherous, even for people with two good legs. This was a case where training blends with need. I wanted Orson to be calm. I needed him to be calm. In the back of my mind lurked the human tendency to believe that because something was important to me, Orson would-as in a Disney movie-figure it out and help me. Hed think something like this: I love Jon. Jon is about to get trampled by some sheep. I have to protect him because he has bad legs and he needs me. Which was a good example of the way I sometimes put him in an impossible position, asking more than he could possibly give, then blaming him for failing. Dogs, like people, are often prisoners, not masters, of their instincts. Orson did love me, did want to please me, but there were other forces at work. As I headed up the slope, Orson bolted and headed for the sheep. But corn overcomes fear in most cases where sheep are concerned. Once he moved, they moved in. With the ram, Nesbitt, leading the way, the flock slid and ran down the slope, plowing right into me. My feet went out from under me, my head banged onto frozen ground, and corn and grain went flying, sending the animals into further frenzy. I cursed and yelled and began swinging the now-empty buckets at the sheep to push them away. My head throbbed. Orson, frantic, grabbed one of the ewes by her wool and began pulling her up the hill, puffs of fleece trailing behind. This was not a rescue effort but a freestyle freakout that had little to do with me. I threw one of the buckets in his direction, and he was startled as it banged on the ground. No, no, no! I yelled. Get out of here. Get out! I was furious. His behavior had injured and endangered me, and had almost harmed an animal. Now some of the sheep were scarfing up the fallen corn, and some were running from him. I calmed down, called him to me, took him into the house and, tossing in a biscuit, put him in his crate. He seemed eager to go in, nervous and confused. After such episodes, Orson often had an air of anxious bewilderment, as if he wasnt sure what had happened. It was almost as if hed come to, after a seizure. Perhaps he had. I let Rose out the door, and she raced to the pasture gate and waited for me. She circled until the sheep were in a tight group, then walked them back up the hill. Limping and muttering, I refilled the buckets. I gave Rose no commands, and she wasnt looking for any. Patrolling back and forth, she simply held the sheep in place-all of them eyeing the refilled buckets-until I dumped the corn into the feeder. Then I backed away and released her, and the sheep came down the hill and ate. Okay, Rose, thanks and out, I said softly-almost all my commands were homegrown, not official trial jargon. She darted to the gate and we went back to the house. I changed tactics. We took to entering the pasture with the sheep in the training pen (courtesy of Rose) and Orson on a leash. Id release him and remain absolutely still and quiet while he ran in circles, gobbled up donkey droppings, and ran from the barn to the feeder. Sometimes it took five minutes, sometimes ten, but he would eventually look up to see where I was. Then we walked to the pen where the sheep were, and I said, Orson, go around. He stopped, spun, barked, and then, after a few moments, he would circle the pen in beautiful, loping runs, then turn and come back to me. I would erupt with joy, give him treats, hug and praise him effusively. It became our daily training ritual, the thing he could do, the work he could be successful at-and, as it turned out, the outer limits of his capabilities as a herding dog. Sometimes he got the notion of come bye-running around the sheep to the right while they were in the pen. Once in a while, hed even grasp away to me, and would break off to the left, circling the pen. But usually hed get too excited, spinning and barking, heading off in random directions. So I just let him run around the pen without any commands, in whatever direction he wanted to go. Every few weeks, I opened the gate and tried to get him to walk calmly behind the sheep, driving them out into the pasture. It rarely worked. Working with Orson, in a formal sense, was endlessly frustrating. His arousal often overtook his comprehension of even the most elemental commands. For five or six days in a row, he might reliably lie down and stay. Then suddenly hed lose it and tear around the pasture as if hed never heard a phrase like lie down. After a few months, I gave up on the idea that Orson could ever work directly with sheep, unless there was a fence between them. I called this our minimalist training: stop doing too much, asking too much, expecting too much. Less is more. Simple is better. Patience is critical, praise, essential. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Sometimes-when is a fine and debatable point-you just have to accept and love the dog you have, even if hes not necessarily the dog you want him to be. Herding sheep isnt the only way for a border collie to be happy.