A Dog Year

by Jon Katz

  I didn’t know how long we would work at herding, or how successfully. This wasn’t my destiny, and probably not Devon’s or Homer’s, either.

  Old Hemp would have to forgive us if we loved hiking through county parks, visiting neighborhood dogs, dashing around upstate, chasing chipmunks, and plunging into crystalline ponds just as much.

  The sun had begun to lower into the Pennsylvania hills as we drove away, planning to return. Carolyn, the faithful Dave at her side, waved her crook in farewell. I pulled over to a pasture fence and gave the gentlemen another good look at the sheep, who glanced back uneasily.

  “Barbie collies, my ass,” I said, scratching the dogs behind their ears. “Good guys. I’m proud of you.”

  They beamed back.

  We are, I thought, two eminent dogs and one dangerous man.

  Postscript

  * * *

  Sometime after midnight, the full moon beamed into my cabin bedroom like a floodlight. I woke up, startled by the brightness.

  Homer was sitting at the foot of the bed, staring through the window at the silhouettes of trees swaying in the wind. Shadows wavered across the blankets and the walls. Devon lay alongside me, instantly awake and alert, watching to see what was up.

  I don’t pass up a full moon on the mountain. It’s a sight I never get used to or take for granted.

  I got up, pulled a bathrobe over my flannel nightshirt, laced hiking boots onto my bare feet, and walked out onto the mountaintop. The cabin was chilly, but it would seem snug and warm after this encounter with the cutting wind.

  The moon delivered as always, bathing the valley in cool light and casting shadows along the fringes of the meadow. The pastures and fields below looked like a muted quilt, with silos and farmhouses embroidered along the seams. If there were a full moon every night, I don’t think I could ever leave.

  The border collies, sensing a break in our routine, didn’t dart out ahead of me as usual to scour the woodpile for chipmunks. They knew this wasn’t our typical walk, maybe because of my odd outfit, perhaps because of the hour. They paced quietly beside me, waiting to see what the agenda was.

  The moon was enormous, a giant silver plate right above us, thin clouds drifting across its face.

  The wind came slicing up the meadow. I envied the dogs their imperviousness to weather. The winter, now finally giving way to spring, had been brutal.

  The snow was gone now, but the trees were still bare. I clapped my hands and walked down into the meadow. It was too ungodly an hour to dress for a proper walk, but I wanted a brief look at this beauty to take back to bed, an aid to rest and lovely dreams.

  This was the signal Devon and Homer had been anticipating; now they knew what to do. They loped down the open field, running easily on the stubbly grass to the stand of pines below, not chasing each other or anything else, just galloping along together in widening circles.

  The dogs weren’t working or hunting and they weren’t playing; they were just traveling, free as the air in this open space.

  Without quite intending to, I strolled over to Julius’s mountain pew, the spot where he had always planted himself to regally study the panorama below. That afternoon, I had scattered his and most of Stanley’s ashes on the mountain, some on that very spot. I’d saved some of Stanley’s ashes to take to the Battenkill, where he’d learned to swim.

  The truth is, I’d had enough mourning. I was weary of it. I’d answered too many questions about where the Labs were and what had happened to them; I’d explained their illnesses too many times and accepted too many condolences.

  I’d wanted that afternoon of scattering the ashes to be dignified, low-key. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I hope—and I’ve given my daughter and wife the appropriate instructions—to go the way Julius and Stanley did, without grueling operations and unnecessary machinery, a swift death followed by cremation.

  But just in case I was wrong in my unsentimental view, I’d mixed some of Jules and Stanley’s powdery ashes together, so that the two Labs could remain united.

  Then I’d sat on the ground for a few seconds’ silence. As usual, the border collies read my mood. Devon understands sadness intuitively; he rushed over and began licking my face. Homer, not normally interested in emotional dramas, rested his head against my leg. But there was little to say about Julius and Stanley that hadn’t already been said and thought.

  My dog year was winding down.

  It was time to reclaim my more normal life, to focus more on my work, on people, and on other things I had, to varying degrees, neglected amidst the turmoil, training, grieving. “You should be proud of yourself,” Deanne told me on the phone one night when I called with a Devon-and-Homer progress report. “What you did was hard to do.”

  It was, and I was, but it was still time to move ahead.

  It had been almost twelve months since Devon had landed so explosively at Newark Airport, inaugurating this time largely defined by dogs, their arrivals and departures, their dramas and foibles, needs and wants.

  If my dogs had been faithful to me, I’d been faithful to them. We’d all kept our promises to one another, and then some. I felt good about that.

  People tell me all the time that they can’t bear to get another dog because the pain of losing their previous one was so great. I know what they mean, but I don’t share that feeling.

  I wouldn’t trade any of it, not for a second. When the terrible day comes that Devon and Homer have to go, in the rightful way that dogs live shorter lives and die before their human partners, my fervent wish is that my gimpy leg will carry me right back to Newark Airport to await the next crate.

  It seemed from my moonlit perch that I had been ping-ponging through this canine universe for a long time, alternately stricken, anxious, patient, vigilant, angry. It felt almost ludicrous to have gotten so embroiled in the lives of four dogs.

  Yet they had challenged me, invigorated and improved me; I had no doubt that I was better for it. For me, the challenge of middle age was not to stand still. Devon, in particular, made sure I wouldn’t.

  In a couple of weeks, I’d scatter the rest of Stanley’s ashes on the banks of the Battenkill. Homer loved to splash and paddle there now.

  Every now and then, tossing the old blue ball for Homer, I expected for a second to see Stanley charging madly after it. Or I looked for Jules in the corner of my study. But those moments were fewer now; in a while, they would stop altogether, as they should.

  Watching these two new dogs circling in the meadow gave me a particular kind of happiness, though, rare and satisfying. The border collies looked so beautiful on that brilliant night: Devon sleekly jet-black and white, Homer having lost his puppy fluff and growing a glossy blue-tinged coat.

  After a few minutes’ meandering, I clapped my hands again. Devon, finishing his third or fourth arc across the meadow, froze and then turned, suddenly came back up the hill, Homer following more slowly and circuitously behind.

  Devon was running strangely, for him, streaking in a straight path right toward me. I wondered for a moment if he’d glimpsed a deer or a fox behind me, he was traveling so purposefully.

  He was almost upon me before I saw the look on his face in the bright night, saw that he was aiming straight at me.

  I suddenly understood and threw my arms wide open. Dev leaped into the air and crashed into me, a forty-five-pound guided missile trusting, as my young daughter once had, that I would catch him. I staggered back against a wooden Adirondack chair that sits like a lonely sentinel on the crest of the mountain; it kept me from toppling over backward.

  I could barely hold Devon’s wriggling body as he lunged at my face, licking one cheek and then the other, his bright eyes fierce with love, small bits of leaves and burrs clinging to his fur.

  My eyes were watering from the chill as we hugged, the wind whipping, Homer gamboling around us in circles, knowing something was up, but not sure what.

  Once again there were three of us and we moved toget
her like a school of fish. But this particular moment, this collision on the mountaintop in the dead of night, was for Devon and for me. The two of us had earned this hard-fought connection. We deserved it.

  “We did it, boy,” I said to the exultant creature in my arms. “We did it.”

  Caution

  * * *

  It’s tough to meet—or read about—a border collie and not want one. They are beautiful, intelligent, storied dogs. Under certain conditions, you can have a wonderful relationship.

  But acquiring a border collie can also be a major mistake, both for you and for a dog that looks great on cable shows but needs very particular circumstances in order to thrive.

  Believe me when I say that this breed isn’t for everybody. Border collies need hours of exercise; they can be unpredictable around small kids; they are hyper, obsessive, territorial, and weird. If you don’t provide continuous and challenging work and exercise for them, they will find ways to busy themselves, ways you probably won’t appreciate.

  There are lots of working dogs and other breeds, including happy and healthy shelter adoptees, that are much easier to raise and far better suited to urban and suburban life.

  If you are pondering bringing a border collie or, for that matter, any other dog into your life, please consider it carefully and talk to breeders and other owners first.

  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 tha
t 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 often 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.