A Dog Year

by Jon Katz

  I was mulling it over all the way home from Minneapolis, but I made no commitment. Then, three weeks after I’d returned, I flew to Chicago to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show in connection with my earlier book, Running to the Mountain. Oprah’s producer had flown upstate with a crew to shoot footage of me and Paula, Devon and Julius the week before. The camera rolled as we walked along the lake and across the meadow.

  During the show, Winfrey, whose warmth surprised me, watched the videotape closely. At a commercial break, she leaned forward, close to me. “Those are beautiful dogs,” she said, in the recognizable tone of a dog lover. “I have a bunch myself. Is that a border collie?”

  I briefly filled her in on Devon’s saga. It was easy to see why Winfrey was so successful: she was one of those people you just want to sit and yak with. I wasted no time in seeking her counsel.

  “Ms. Winfrey,” I confessed to the high priestess of TV, “the breeder has a border collie puppy she says is sweet and loving. I’m agonizing about taking him.”

  She leaned closer, interested, meeting my gaze. This was not a face one could lie to.

  “Do you want the dog?”

  “Well . . . yes. I don’t know why, but I do. Very much.”

  “Then take him, Jon,” she said, more a command than a suggestion. “Make yourself happy.”

  She leaned back, the camera lights came on again, and we finished the interview.

  I rushed to my cell phone after the show to call Paula, who probably thought she had heard it all. She knew about the puppy, of course, and had gone immediately to a DEFCON level-one alert, but I’d assured her this was mere fantasizing. She, of course, knew better. Now this.

  “Honey, great news,” I said. “Oprah says we should get the puppy!”

  “What?”

  “Oprah! Oprah Winfrey just told me to take Homer if it will make me happy. And it will.”

  “Oh, God,” was all she said.

  Ten

  Coming and Going

  * * *

  Remembering my previous initiation rites, I asked Deanne to ship Homer to Albany—an even longer flight than Texas to Newark, but a quieter, less frantic airport. We’d have a calmer introduction. And going to the mountain after I picked him up would be a better way for all of us to get to know one another.

  This was going to be fine. Homer was happy and fun-loving, Deanne reported; he hadn’t known a nasty moment in his six-month life. He wouldn’t challenge Devon or usurp him. Devon could be king, prince, leader, and big brother. Homer didn’t care about canine politics. “This is one of the few dogs Devon won’t ever feel threatened by,” Deanne promised.

  I had few worries about Julius, who enjoyed his morning walk, but slept pretty much the rest of the day. He was probably blue without Stanley—he had to be—but he was also slowing down, very content to be around me and Paula. No problems there.

  As for me, this latest adoption surely had some connection to losing Stanley, but I was too busy writing and dog-walking to figure it out. So on a November night I found myself driving to Albany Airport, an hour or so from my cabin. I left Devon in the Trooper’s backseat while I went in to meet the new guy.

  This time, as the plastic crate was rolled out into the baggage area, I heard cooing from the two baggage handlers, both of them women. “He’s so sweet,” one of them said. “He’s been trying to lick us. What a doll!”

  I opened the crate—just a crack!—and eased my hand in. Homer edged toward the back. Something about me had frightened him; he was shaking. I reached, slipped the leash onto his collar, and gently pulled him from the crate. Confronted by a large stranger in a Yankees cap, the bright lights, and the airport carousel, he looked terrified. I picked him up, and a Good Samaritan watching our hesitant drama offered to carry the crate.

  The thing about Homer that struck me then, as it does now, was his eyes—bright, curious, a bit mischievous. He was much smaller, thinner, more awkward, and less imposing than Devon, with puppy fuzz instead of a glossy, dark coat. If Devon looked a little like a wolf, Homer suggested a small fox. Devon had all the carriage and beauty of a show dog. Homer was built to run and play. He was cute, which Devon was not.

  Like Devon, though, he took in every sight and sound, his head tilting to the side if he heard something odd or intriguing.

  Outside, I thanked my benefactor and led the quaking Homer around so that he could meet Devon. What a sane contrast to Devon’s arrival.

  Off-leash, Devon was usually indifferent to dogs. Some breeds—shepherds and golden retrievers especially—trigger his herding impulses, but he loses interest once he realizes that they aren’t livestock. He’s never bitten or attacked a dog, though he’s nipped at a few who get too enthusiastically in his face.

  So I was stunned when I opened the Trooper’s door and Devon came snarling out and instantly had Homer on the ground as he went for his throat. Homer shrieked.

  I kicked Devon away and he looked at me in outrage. His attack couldn’t have been more clear: I know what you’re up to, he was saying, and there is no way this runt is coming into our car, our house, our lives. I’ve earned my place, and there’s no room in it for him.

  Homer—who, I later realized, had a strong sense of the dramatic—was squealing as if he were being murdered. I picked him up and put him on a blanket on the front seat, reaching back and cuffing Devon on the shoulder for good measure. Devon gave a couple of throaty growls, which caused Homer to scream again. I turned to the back, placed one hand firmly on each side of his face, and hissed that this dog was coming to live with us and if I heard another growl I’d mash him into the seat. Devon gave me a murderous look, got the message, but was unrepentant. Homer curled up in a ball and nibbled gratefully on the tiny biscuits I’d brought him while I stroked his head.

  He was still a baby, a fluffball in a brown-gray shade that breeders call “blue.” His ears stood at attention. And he largely ignored the fact that Devon was watching him like a hawk zeroing in on prey. All during the drive home, Devon glowered angrily over at me from the backseat.

  I stopped in the village at my friends Jeff and Michelle’s house because their two-and-a-half-year-old twins wanted to see the new puppy. I watched carefully. When I brought Devon over for the first time, he had run off Jeff’s good-natured mutt, Lulu, and had nipped at one of the kids when she lunged at his head. It took a scolding, very strict monitoring, and several months for him to be at ease and reliable at Jeff and Michelle’s.

  But Homer eagerly bounded down the hall, into the living room, and hurtled right onto Michelle’s lap. He licked her face furiously, then jumped over to the children and slobbered all over them, then Jeff. He even jumped down and licked Lulu. This more or less set the tone for Homer’s approach to the new world.

  Then he accompanied everyone upstairs for the kids’ bedtime, hopping up on each of their beds for good-night kisses.

  Meanwhile, Devon slipped off into the dining room to dump on the carpet.

  When we reached the cabin, I let both dogs out of the car and Devon took another lunge at Homer’s head. Homer screamed, and so did I. Devon still looked outraged, far from compliant. Julius had been waiting for us and gave the puppy a warm greeting. Homer, no fool, loved him instantly and followed him everywhere. In fact, when we went out for a stroll, he walked half-underneath Julius, peering out at both me and Devon with nearly equal dread.

  This wasn’t as trouble-free as I’d hoped. Back inside, Homer came over to me gingerly, then froze. I looked over and saw Devon, crouched and ready to spring, giving him the herding eye. I chased Devon outside, then sat on the carpet and waited.

  Homer, an adorable creature, crawled hesitantly into my lap and licked my hand as I scratched his belly and fed him some biscuits. Julius came over to console him, too; he had a profoundly generous spirit. Like Homer, Julius had known few conflicts and crises in his life. Loved and loving from birth, he was secure in his place in the world.

  But he looked around warily f
or the Helldog. Good thing he didn’t see what I saw on the other side of the sliding glass door—Devon’s slim silhouette in the moonlight. He had never taken his eyes from Homer or from our scene of betrayal.

  Homer was different.

  With Devon, life was still something of a brawl, punctuated by lengthening periods of calm, much loving, and some fun.

  He had come far. He was sweet to people, happy working, walking, or riding with me, watching me, sticking his head out of a car window to catch the wind, chasing geese or trucks. He didn’t mind accepting treats, compliments, or pats from admirers, and could be quite loving to his coterie of friends and admirers. But he was selective: everything else, he considered beneath his dignity.

  He still challenged me, though less frequently. He did what I asked most of the time, but always in his own way, taking somewhat longer than necessary to come when I called, never lying down completely on the first request.

  Homer—adjusting first to the cabin, then to New Jersey and all its attendant sounds and sights, unnerved by sirens and loud trucks and my bellowed commands at Devon—wanted no trouble. My yelling or throwing a choke chain—let alone a scooper—traumatized him. All he wanted was to know what I wanted. And to avoid incurring the displeasure of his hypervigilant elder brother.

  I left Devon in the house for fifteen minutes or so twice a day and took Homer out alone for training sessions.

  At first we worked in the front yard, until we both became aware of dark eyes glowering at us from an upstairs window. Then I took Homer to the park.

  When we returned, Devon would always have found a way to show his pique. A couple of forks from the kitchen table would wind up deposited on the living-room sofa. I might find my shoes in a pile, their laces carefully removed, or sofa cushions pulled onto the floor, as if some gremlin had been rummaging through the house. The same old message: Leave me behind and you’ll pay. Every time.

  Devon had developed a genius for limits. He never destroyed or damaged any of the things he moved, nor did he ever get caught in the act of moving them. He was untouchable. Besides, his mischief wasn’t serious, just a message—part of life with border collies. I could live with it. In fact, I think it annoyed him when I seemed not to notice.

  But his response to Homer was a problem. Homer had stopped approaching me when I sat on the couch watching TV, and wouldn’t jump up on the bed for a morning greeting. Yet when I walked over to pat or hug him, he wriggled and squealed for joy. Like Devon, he always wanted to keep me in sight, moving from room to room with me. But once there, he wouldn’t leave his bed or sit by me for fear of Devon’s malicious stare.

  Deanne urged me to crack down. “It’s not okay for him to keep Homer away from you,” she warned. “It’s your job to decide who can approach you.”

  Deanne said Devon was and always would be dominant, number two in the pack, after me, and as such had certain privileges: the right to eat first, for instance, or grab the best treats and rawhide chews and toys. Otherwise, I ought to call the shots.

  At least Homer had an unambivalent adoration of Julius. They fell into a grandpa-grandson kind of relationship. When Devon glowered or snatched his toys, Homer would pout or retreat and curl up with Jules for comfort. They were devoted chums. But Julius was too gentle—or too above the fray—to defend his fuzzy little acolyte.

  Sometimes the collies and I headed out and left Jules snoozing in the house or the yard, and returned two or three hours later to find him in the same position.

  I wondered whether Jules was depressed. He was moving even less than usual. Perhaps he was still bereft at Stanley’s loss. It hadn’t been very long, really. In any case, I was terrified to take him to the vet. He seemed content.

  So Devon and I went back to war over Homer. Homer stopped coming when I called, which was unacceptable and could be dangerous in a congested area. But when I put a leash on him and yanked him to me, and was voluble with praise and generous with treats when he complied, Devon was on us in a flash, crowding in jealously, once even nipping Homer and earning himself a swat with a rolled-up magazine. Once again, Devon displayed an awesome will and an independent mind, and a willingness to pay the price. I was his. Homer was welcome to stay in the house as long as he kept his distance.

  In Devon’s defense, Homer was an utterly adorable puppy who loved everybody, showering even total strangers with licks and nuzzles. He was still, at six months, small enough to scoop up in your arms, and sweet-tempered enough to be happy there. Devon, an obvious weirdo, elicited fewer coos and cuddles from passersby. He may have perceived his hard-won affection and attention as being in jeopardy again, and he was prepared to fight for it.

  Swatting or yelling at Devon did no good in this tussle—it only scared Homer, who sensed when Devon and I were about to tangle, and fled. He hated it when Devon got into trouble, rushing over to lick him reassuringly. Homer was staunchly antiviolence. In fact, he was beginning to back away and hide when my training sessions began, or when I tried to brush him. If I gave in, Devon would be free to ignore all my commands, which was fine with him. If I insisted on being obeyed, I would risk traumatizing a new puppy.

  New strategy: if Devon muscled in on Homer, or even looked menacing, I put him in the yard, where he couldn’t see what was going on. This worked, sometimes. And Homer was a quick study.

  We moved on to joint training sessions, so that Dev could show him what to do. I held a choke chain in my right hand and held my left hand up in the “stay” position, and as Devon moved two inches toward his kid brother, I tossed the chain at the floor in front of him. This scared the wits out of Homer at first, but he was pretty clever, too. It only took a week or two for him to recognize that Devon was getting yelled at, not him; that he was getting treats and Devon wasn’t; that I would protect him.

  So I watched him get easier, less intimidated around beta dog (to my alpha, of course), even more sociable. He was wary and honored the circle Devon drew around me, but day by day he lost his fear. When I called, he came wiggling and wagging to my side, a happy pup, though he never dallied long. He made friends in the neighborhood. He was Mr. Congeniality, much in the manner of Julius. We all reached a kind of truce, marked by some tension and wariness but less and less actual combat.

  It was becoming difficult, as winter loomed, to evade the fact that Julius was losing steam. He was following so far behind on our walks now that I sometimes walked him alone. Even then, he had lost interest in his deliberate sniffing. He seemed increasingly lifeless, eager to be with me, but not eager to leave the house. Even for a Lab as mellow as he was, something was off.

  In December, full of foreboding and denial, I took him to the vet. We had another dreadful conversation—colon cancer, Dr. King said. Again I faced a set of grim choices, the unacceptably invasive or the questionably effective: surgery or chemotherapy. But it came down to the same decision. And to the same tile floor, the same goodbye hugs. Jules slurped Dr. King and her assistant as they gave him the injections. “Jerk,” I said shakily, cradling his big head in my lap. “Stop licking them. Don’t you know they’re killing you?”

  Stroking his head, trying not to lose control and frighten him, I told Julius quietly that if there was such a place as heaven, he had definitely made the cut.

  It would be a mountaintop where he could lie happily and gaze out over a meadow. Lots of wildflowers, I told him, so he’d have lovely things to sniff without even having to get up. The sun would shine always. A pile of rawhide chips smeared with peanut butter would be within easy reach and would never diminish.

  In the meadow below, a parade of foxes, rabbits, deer, and raccoons would pass by for his amusement but—a special feature of Julius’s paradise—a river would flow between him and them, so he wouldn’t feel any pressure to chase them or even respond, but he would feel free to contemplate life and meditate upon its mysteries.

  Plus, children. Hordes of the little kids he loved so much. They’d line up for a few hours each day, kids
who were sick, who’d been bitten by lesser dogs, who feared dogs, who were meeting their first dog up close. They’d step up hesitantly, clutching their parents’ hands, and he’d lean over the way he always did, very slowly, no sudden moves, and give them gentle slurps on their cheeks. “Nice doggie,” the moms and dads would say, as they always did, guiding chubby hands down his sleek white coat and across his magnificent head.

  The kids would hug him and love him, and all dogs, for all time.

  I told him that Stanley would be there too, the team reunited, companions forever, Stanley with an endless supply of sticks and twigs to pile up here and there in secret places.

  Me, I told him honestly, I wasn’t so sure about; I wasn’t as generous or as loving as my Labs. But Julius would know peace. And somewhere during this mumbled, faltering account, he quietly slipped away.

  Afterwards, my daughter, Emma, called home to ask how I was. “There’s a big hole in my heart, and I think I’ll never fill it,” I told her. I found myself choking up at odd times of the day, at my computer or in the car, and early in the morning when I looked over at the dog bed in the corner and Jules was not there.

  People ask me if I knew, perhaps unconsciously, that Stanley or Julius was ailing before I took in Devon and Homer. The truth is, I don’t know. Anyone over fifty who’s paying attention has a heightened sense of mortality. I was extremely sensitive to the Labs, who as a breed don’t have great longevity; perhaps without quite realizing it, I’d noticed that each of them was changing, slowing down. Perhaps that spurred me to bring home Devon and Homer.

  But consciously, the idea of either Lab dying soon hadn’t entered my mind. I thought they would be with us for several years, at least, showing the newcomers how it was done, introducing them to favorite haunts upstate, monitoring the increasing household. I thought in the summer that Stanley might give swimming lessons in the Battenkill. The way it worked out, the coming and going, was symmetrical but premature.