by Jon Katz
Brandishing a pooper-scooper in my right hand, I gave chase, shouting as I went, “Hey! Hey, stop! Stop, there’s a dog on the car.” My neighbors walking their terrier across the street paused in shock and stared.
The van slowed, a trusting act by a driver who’d probably looked in his rearview mirror to see what the tumult was about. God knows what he or she thought at the sight of a 230-pound man galumphing down the street, waving a strange device and screaming. The van began to speed up.
My God, I thought, how did he get up there?
I stopped and shouted as loudly as I ever have, “Devon, come! Now!” My voice wasn’t pleading, but angry. Perhaps thirty yards down the street, he hopped off as nimbly as if the van were a small step stool and lighted on the sidewalk.
“Sit!” I screamed. He did, looking up at me in some bewilderment, perhaps wondering why I was making so much noise. Then he averted his face, as if in shame or fear that I would strike him. He remained absolutely still as I grabbed his leash, and we headed back to the house.
My dog year had begun.
Two
Oceangoing Labs
* * *
Watching the denouement of this drama from behind the backyard fence, Julius and Stanley looked puzzled.
They were beautiful dogs, big and statuesque and all snowy white with soulful dark eyes. Walking Devon back toward the house, still in shock over his van-surfing (“What were you doing?” I asked him over and over), it dawned on me that I now would experience both ends of the canine spectrum. Julius and Stanley were as peaceful, responsive, and easygoing as Devon was wild and anxious.
When I think of the Labs now, I picture a clear warm summer day at the National Seashore on Cape Cod.
The waves crash along the sand, gulls squawk overhead, small fishing boats and giant freighters glide along the horizon, and the tawny dunes glow as the sun lowers.
All along the beach, the shrinks and writers and financial-services people from Boston and New York lie sprawled beneath their tasteful beach umbrellas, keeping one eye on their kids, the other on the Times Book Review or a hardcover novel.
Although dogs are officially prohibited on the public beaches, people bring them at the end of the day, when most of the families and park rangers have left, the lifeguards have climbed down from their stands, the hot-dog vendor has driven away from the parking lot, and a breeze comes up off the water.
The arriving dogs are usually good-natured, well-bred and trained, easy around people—the kind of dogs you want to bring along on your vacation and can take to a public beach without worry.
None of these dogs are more stately than mine. None have sweeter dispositions or look grander lying on the sand, as their ancestors did so faithfully generations ago, after hauling fish and nets up and down the shores of Newfoundland (though not the shores of Labrador: some English guy, for reasons of his own, changed the name of the breed).
If you walked down this beach and gazed admiringly at Julius and Stanley, as so many people did each summer, you would expect to see them, at any moment, bound down toward the water, plunge into the big waves, and swim halfway to Europe without working up much of a sweat.
You would wait a long time.
For me, this lovely scene is perenially bittersweet. Paula and I have been coming to this beach nearly our whole lives, long before we were married. We have always treasured time together with our daughter at the onset of twilight, the dunes turning shadowy, the quiet deepening, the cries of the gulls more haunting.
But this is also the hour of the nearly mythic oceangoing Labs, an annual humiliation, a sore point, an unflattering window into my insecure male vanity and misplaced expectations.
They materialize suddenly, big black and chocolate retrievers with sleek fur and barrel chests, conscious of their rugged Canadian heritage, casually arrogant. They head for the water, their owners nearby, equally sleek and cool, smug in their assurance that their dogs will soon be doing what nature meant them to do—plowing into the water, bringing something back.
Which is exactly what happens. The Labs canter, like mustangs on a prairie, right into the sometimes huge and powerful waves. Strong and fearless, they paddle out unhesitatingly toward their target, then return toting balls or sticks, sometimes a piece of driftwood. They emerge, shake off the water, and refocus, ready to take the plunge again and again. They don’t play with or even notice other dogs or people, their eager eyes fixed on their owners and masters, to see in which direction they’ll toss the prize.
This is serious stuff, the outcome of generations of careful breeding, a testament to the instincts and fidelity and courage of the working dog.
Julius and Stanley are watching the dogs as intently as I am, fascinated by these exotic creatures. I once imagined the sight might reawaken some dormant DNA in my dogs, trigger ancient instincts. Nope. Mostly, they seem to enjoy the show, like ticket-holders at a circus, enthralled by the spectacle but never dreaming of climbing into the ring.
Here at the ocean’s edge, one is reminded of the origins of these particular working dogs. There is something beautiful about what they do, about their concentration and determination and the bond they have with their owners. It’s one of the happy partnerships in the long, often sad, history of humans and animals.
Heavy surf or strong currents hardly seem to matter. The dogs tear through the waves undaunted, sometimes taking a wallop but always returning with their quarry. They can do this forever, it seems.
Their owners are proud and pleased. This is why you have a dog like this, after all, not only to have a pet, but to glory in the pride and heritage of the breed, to conjure a time when the relationship between people and dogs was essential, a matter vital to work, to life itself.
This has not been my experience with my Labs, even though their lineage dates to England and includes a slew of awards and decorations, and their long pedigrees hang framed on my office wall. I, too, have dreamed of standing at the beach, throwing a ball or stick for an oceangoing Lab. Instead, day after day, summer after summer, I sit with my wife and daughter and Julius and Stanley, observing the scene on either side of me.
Julius tried the ocean once, when he was little more than a puppy, inserting a paw like an old lady visiting Miami Beach. He looked disturbed. Too cold, too rocky.
Besides, as the sneering local vet told me when I subsequently carried Julius into his office with cracked and bleeding paws, he was delicate, probably allergic. The beach sand irritated his sensitive paw pads; the salt water stung them. I’d taken Julius on a hike through the Provincetown dunes once, and he ended up limping so badly I had to carry him back the last quarter-mile. He weighed more than eighty pounds at the time, and the rescue nearly killed us both.
Maybe booties would be in order, said the vet, practically smirking. There was no way, I replied frostily, that my yellow Lab was going to the beach in booties. If Julius’s retrieving skills were rusty, his dignity was profound. There was mine to consider, too.
I don’t even want to think about how many water toys I bought, how often I stood pleading with Julius to fetch while he wagged his tail and gazed at me ruefully. On occasion, I’d waded in after a toy or ball myself, hoping to serve as a role model. “Good boy,” my daughter cheered as I emerged with the ball; she was going through her highly ironic phase. But none of this helped. Julius will go in up to his ankles sometimes, looking uneasy, and I know he’s doing it for me, to salvage my pride.
Otherwise, he seems to have no interest. He doesn’t chase balls. He just doesn’t. But so what? I honor him for his own considerable gifts. Would these other dogs sit by my feet for hours at a stretch while I clack away at my computer?
Stanley offers some hope. An indefatigable ball-chaser, he loves to swim—but only in a lake or pond, please. No big waves. He’s happy to wade into the surf, but at the first crash of a breaker, he turns on his heels, heads back to shore, and goes to sleep. Oceangoing Labs are diving and plunging all around him; he is
not impressed. And when you think about it, they do look a little silly, like trained seals at aquarium shows. Where’s the great tradition in chasing a floating stick?
Sometimes I take the boys to the bayside beach, where the water’s warmer and the waves are mere ripples. Stanley will swim out, under these conditions, to fetch his retriever toy. I cheer him on. Julius watches.
They are incomparably regal, though. The casual observer might think that they were merely resting between missions. Some passersby remark that my dogs must be superbly trained to sit on the beach like that despite all the temptations, to resist leaping into the water. Thanks, I say. Yes, they are very disciplined.
Well, they have other gifts. Kids come over to meet them, pat them, climb all over their furry bodies. My dogs are unfailingly friendly, gracious, affectionate. Parents seek Julius and Stanley out to show their three-year-olds that they don’t have to be afraid of dogs. Maybe back in England or Canada the task of this particular strain of Labradors was to hang around with the royal kids while other, inferior dogs were sent out in search of game.
So what we do, mostly, is sit for hours. I read a book and stare out to sea. Whenever I reach a hand out to either side, a dog’s square head is there for scratching, a dog’s tongue gives me a lick. Julius and Stanley watch empathically as their cousins wear themselves out. My dogs are deeply spiritual beings, content to gaze at skittering sandpipers and ponder the state of the universe. They have no need to race around, no matter what their ancestors did. Times change.
I fretted for weeks about the impact of a third dog on these two. Really agonized, mostly because I could hardly find anybody—breeders, our dog trainer, my wife, the neighbors—who thought it was a good idea.
Two dogs are a pair, I’d read; three make a pack. The third can throw off the entire dynamic, setting up rivalries for dominance, food, and affection, causing anxiety or even aggression. Not to mention the practical concerns of caring for three dogs in a bustling New Jersey suburb: three would be harder to walk and clean up after, would run up the vet bills, would tear up the yard and bring more smells and hair into our already ratty house.
Julius would have no problem with an added dog, I knew, because Julius had no problem with anything. Stanley was a tad more assertive, and might cling to his number-two spot in the pack. He never bothered other dogs, but he wasn’t crazy about them, either. He had bonded deeply with Julius, the only dog—apart from his sister Sally, who lived two blocks away—for whom he’d ever shown much affection.
But when it came to people, they were matchless. Julius was my soulmate. His stability and loyalty were anchors for a restless and volatile personality like mine. I smiled every time I looked at him.
Stanley was a mischievous playmate. We wrestled and played tug-of-war with rope toys. Over time, he’d developed a singular passion for ball-chasing and retrieving, and my tolerant neighbors never complained about his bounding across their lawns in pursuit on our daily outings.
I’m only mildly embarrassed to confide that the three of us had a game we especially loved: I’d sneak off into a corner of the basement or a bedroom closet, hide, and utter a single bark—a challenge for them to find me, hunting dogs that they are. The two of them would scour the house, sniffing, barking, rushing from room to room. Stanley was invariably the one who’d track me down—he moved faster than Julius—and there was much rejoicing with biscuits for all. Well, for two of us.
Other dogs grasped their gentleness and rarely challenged them. If they did, my dogs would back off, puzzled and eager to stay out of trouble. Julius, for one, would never expend the kind of energy it took to get into a fight.
When a kid came near, even a toddler, both dogs would sit down, tails wagging, and let the child approach, then gently lean over to give him or her a lick. In warm weather especially, it sometimes took a long time to circumnavigate our block, as both adults and children came out of their houses to say good morning, offer treats and pats, or just tag along. The FedEx man and the garbage-truck drivers were their pals.
They were either very wise or fairly dumb, I often thought, but the end result was the same: neither dog wished any creature harm, or ever hurt another living thing.
So why bring an emotionally battered border collie with high energy and low self-esteem into this perfect mix?
Almost everyone I knew asked me that question. Why import this strange dog all the way from Texas when I had two dogs I dearly loved, and who were settled into such a comfortable routine? Why one of the most high-strung and unstable breeds? Why go through all the training, expense, and disruption?
I have a history of doing things that aren’t particularly smart—buying a run-down cabin in upstate New York, switching jobs, and even careers. I guess I’m a bit unstable and high-strung myself.
Maybe that’s because I fear stasis, when the body is still vital but the mind sets like cement. Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what’s wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the Internet, alarms go off. I know I’m around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one’s spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears. That’s one possible explanation for this new adventure.
Here’s another: my own family life had been complex and painful. I longed for someone who would come along and take care of me and my sister. Maybe I wanted the chance to do that for a creature like Devon, to be the benefactor who came along and took faithful care of him.
Another thought: having a child had been the central, most rewarding experience of my life. I loved being a father and was proud of the kind of father I usually was, mostly because I have such a great kid. Now that she’s gone off to college, I don’t really miss being a full-time dad, although I do miss her. But I’m not finished with nurturing yet, with raising and caring for living things. I didn’t get to raise as many kids as I’d wanted.
Julius and Stanley had taught me that I’m good at this dog thing. I can raise and train and love dogs. They’re not kids, but they, too, need clear, firm direction. I feel responsible for meeting their needs, while also making clear to them what is expected, what their end of the contract is.
It seems to me that people should develop and deepen the skills they have, even if they come later in life. If I had found something I did well and could get better at, why not take it seriously and, in the process, give one needy creature the loving sanctuary all creatures deserve?
Politics are abstract to me. I can’t relate to liberals or conservatives. Dogs live on a scale that I can comprehend; their lives are an outcome I can affect. They make me happy, satisfy me deeply, anchor me in an elemental way. Sometimes it’s hard for me to trust people, or to find people I can come to trust. I trust my dogs, though. They would do anything for me, and I for them. That’s a powerful relationship, no matter what the species.
It took a year after my golden retriever, Clarence, died young from kidney disease before I decided I was ready for another dog. At the time, I’d recently abandoned a journalism career to write at home. It was lonely at times in my basement office, and when I got stuck on a chapter or an idea, I had a habit of walking through the neighborhood to sort things out. Frequently stymied, I ended up walking three or four times a day. What dog wouldn’t benefit from that, and from day-long companionship?
I’d bought Clarence in exactly the wrong, if all too common, way: eager to bring home a puppy for my toddler daughter, I’d stopped at a suburban pet store, mostly because it misleadingly had “American Kennel Club” in its name.
This was a lazy and risky approach. A dog enters your family for years, interacts with your spouse, children, and neighbors, lives in your house, becomes a constant presence. Yet few people—myself then included—seem willing to do the homework to make the right choices. Dogs bought from such stores are often inbred, produced in puppy mills, their
health, background, and temperament all unknowable.
But golden retriever puppies are adorable, and even though I knew better, I wanted a dog, and this one was in my arms, licking my face and my daughter’s. Once a kid gets his or her hands on a puppy, it’s the rare parent who can dispatch it back into its cage and walk away.
Clarence was a great dog in many ways, but he had a raft of health and temperament problems. He was touchy around young children and strangers, had a bevy of allergies, and he died too young.
None of these difficulties kept me from nearly driving my car into a tree on the way home from the vet after he was put down.
The next time, reading books, talking to experts, taking advantage of those new tools the Internet and the World Wide Web, I had the chance to think through my decision more deliberately.
In my Boomerville town, big dogs were definitely in style, and a few stayed locked up in houses all day while everybody was at work and school. Hunting dogs were special favorites, because they are bred for patience and spending time with people, and because they are often beautiful. It was sometimes an unfortunate formula: the fewer people around, the bigger and more powerful the dog. People wanted a pet, but many were too pressed or eager for a puppy to focus long on the reality that big dogs need exercise, not to mention disciplined, labor-intensive, time-consuming training.
For the noblest of reasons, it had also become popular—and immensely rewarding—to go to the local pound and bring home stray and abandoned animals. Many were lovely, companionable dogs, but some were mixed breeds unsuitable for suburban families, tense and unpredictable around other animals, kids, even their owners. This can also be true of purebred dogs, some of whom suffer from overbreeding and don’t live up to their TV commercial images.
