Talking to Animals

by Jon Katz

  When I pulled her away, she threw herself against the pasture fence and howled. Okay, I told Maria, I’m not going to do this to her for the next four months. She’s going to work.

  But first I introduced her to the crate, her quiet place, her resting place, her centering space. A place we could always put her when she got too excited, too aroused, too confused. Crates are dens to dogs, a natural and comforting habitat for them. People who think crating is cruel for dogs are being cruel to dogs. They are denying them the easiest, safest, most ancient way of being calm and feeling safe. There are no choices in crates, no confusion, no challenges and distractions. There a dog can feel calm, absorb the world around them, get to know him or herself.

  Crate training is easy. With Fate, I put food inside the crate, and a few toys and treats. Every time she went inside, she found something to eat, something that made her feel this place was hers.

  Food is not only nourishment to dogs—it is life. Anyplace a dog is fed is a home to the dog. Within a few hours, Fate was going to the crate on her own, happily resting after work or stimulation.

  The crate was our first communication. I offered her a safe place to rest, eat, and sleep. I gave her something precious, and my taking her there associated me with good things, with safety and peacefulness.

  Then we went out to the sheep. Fate just about blew her lid when she saw the sheep. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head; her body froze. She seemed to leave the earth behind and take off into space.

  I decided to talk to her. I opened the pasture gate and let Red, the experienced dog, out first. I wanted to make sure the sheep didn’t go after the puppy and mistake her for a raccoon or coyote, as they sometimes will. I didn’t want her to get butted or chased or frightened. She was very young and very small.

  I felt it was time for her to meet the sheep, and she needed me to take her there. So I let Red out of the gate and told him to get the sheep and put them in a corner of the pasture. He did what I asked.

  Fate stood inside the gate staring, transfixed, then she shrieked in protest and raced back and forth, desperate to follow Red.

  When the sheep were in their corner, I opened the gate and Fate shot out, toward Red and toward the sheep. When she got closer to them, I put her on a long lead and together we began marching toward the sheep. At first, Fate barked, shook, trembled, and lunged.

  When she did, I stopped. Every few feet, I lay down on the ground. I was mimicking the behavior I wanted her to adopt. After the fourth time, she came over to me, fascinated, and lay down. I praised her effusively, with words, with touch, with body language, and she has consistently lain down on command ever since.

  But we weren’t there yet. I calmed myself and began speaking to her in a low voice. I imagined the two of us sitting quietly in the pasture, this whirling and lunging puppy now still and meditative. It took about fifteen minutes. I kept telling myself to be calm, be patient. Once or twice, I pulled on her lead in frustration, trying to get her to be still and lie down. Of course, this was a mistake, and it only made her more frantic. But this is the reality of training. They get it one day, and not the next. Circumstances change, the sheep react differently, it is hotter or colder, the trainer is confused or in a bad mood. Training doesn’t just happen when you get it right the first time. It goes on and on, often throughout the life of the dog.

  But I finally caught myself and truly let go of impatience. I just lay down and held the lead loosely and after a few more minutes of lunging, Fate lay down and stared at the sheep. They stared back. Red, behind us, kept everyone in place. The image I had in my head began to come to life in the real world.

  It was a beautiful, warm, and breezy late spring day. The sheep stared curiously at Fate, then lowered their heads to graze. They had been herded by dogs almost every day of their lives. Fate was not nearly strong enough in eye or body to make them obey her. They were not impressed by the presence of this hyperkinetic puppy.

  We sat still, soaking up the sun, feeling the soft breeze, being calm.

  And that was the message I was bringing to Fate, the excitable puppy: it’s okay to be calm, okay to do nothing, to be still, to watch, to learn.

  And the message I received back, from her eyes, her body, her ears, was this: It is nice to sit here with you, it is safe and good to be still, to watch the sheep, to test them with my eyes.

  It was an important bonding moment, setting the tone for that day and for all that was to come.

  Recently, I started taking photographs of the “posted” signs that sprout every year just before hunting season, when many people decide whether to allow hunting on their property. The signs are “posted” to let the hunters know when they are welcome and when they are not. Some of the signs are yellow, some red, some handwritten or painted on wooden posts. The old ones often have vines and flowers growing around them; they are evocative and timeless. I did a photo series called “Post Art” and published the pictures on my blog.

  Fate, a curious, even vigilant, puppy, watched me as I paused by the “posted” signs and took some pictures. It wasn’t long before she was joining in the work. She would run ahead, find a sign by the side of the road, and stand beside it, waiting for me to come up with the camera. She never noticed the signs or stood by them before, but now she proved expert at finding them. Sometimes she posed, wanting to be part of the photo; sometimes she just touched the post with her nose and then sat down until I came up.

  While Fate took on the task of spotting my signs, Red, my other border collie, would sit by my side while I considered the angles and took the photo. It is a wonderful gift for a photographer to have a dog—an active working dog, no less—who will sit faithfully and absolutely still while he or she stands by the side of a country road and takes pictures.

  It is hard to relate what these dogs do for me and my work and do it justice. Fate and Red keep me company, watch over me, inspire me, guide me to the creative spark. They move the sheep around, too, and ride shotgun in the car. They remind me of all I’ve come to understand about communication with animals.

  I understand the connective power of food.

  I know the importance of getting in touch with my own emotions in order to understand theirs.

  I have learned never to see animals as pitiable and abused creatures, but rather as my partners on the earth.

  I know we cannot heal ourselves or the earth if we do not preserve and protect them.

  I understand that it is not possible to love animals or find a place for them on the earth if we do not also learn to love and support the people who care for them, live with them, work with them.

  I know that saving animals does not simply mean to save them from human cruelty and abuse; it means sacrificing, changing, and opening our minds to the idea that they are as important to us as cars, trucks, buses, highways, and condominium towers.

  I see we need a new awakening, a new kind of movement to speak for the animals and to define and protect their most basic right: to remain in our world and in our everyday lives.

  I know that work is not cruel for domesticated animals, but essential in order for them to survive and to give human beings the drive and motivation to take care of them.

  Saving animals does not mean taking them away from people, forcing them out of work, and out of cities and suburbs and towns. It means just the opposite: it means finding work for them everywhere we can and as often as we can. If we brought animals like horses back into our lives as we have brought dogs to the center of our lives, then we would quickly come to know them and feel the same way about them, and no one would dare to ban or banish them or take them away from us in the name of protecting their rights.

  Every animal banned or banished is another drop of blood for mother earth and for the idea of the great partnership between people and animals that has existed for all of human history. This partnership is being destroyed by a new idea of animal rights that does not protect the rights of animals, and by well-meaning human
beings quick to exploit animals in the name of righteousness and noble feeling but slow to understand them or learn what it is they truly need.

  Once again, we need a better and wiser understanding of animals than this, one that honors what Henry Beston wrote nearly a century ago. We cannot make good decisions about animals if we simply project our own fears, emotions, neuroses, and fantasies onto them.

  They are not, in fact, our dependents. They are not our siblings or children. They are and have always been our partners in the joys and travails of the world, and they need now more than ever for us to understand them in truthful and accurate ways.

  They have a right to be understood. We are morally obliged to look harder for ways to keep them in our world and in our everyday lives, rather than seek ways to remove them from the world.

  We got Fate when she was two months old, in May 2015. Every day for seven months—sun, rain, snow—I took Fate out to work with the sheep.

  Young border collies are easily aroused—they are impulsive, obsessive, and easily distracted. A border collie around sheep can be a wild animal, challenging the patience, clarity, and instincts of the human beings training them. But Fate was more than game and we went successfully through the usual training dramas and challenges. Getting her to pay attention to me. Getting her to lie down on command. Getting her to slow down. Moving in relationship to her. (Border collies move in relation to sheep and their human shepherd; it is a ballet, not a solo, and they all move a lot faster than I do.) Helping her learn to slow down, to give eye, to not be pushed too far or too fast, where she might be intimidated by the sheep.

  I was determined to be patient, to reinforce her every good move, to wait for her to grow up a bit and be able to focus and concentrate more, to show more authority to the sheep, to get behind them and drive them, move them forward the way the dogs always do on television, the way Red and Rose always did.

  But as the months passed, I became uneasy. Something was wrong. Fate was not evolving in the way herding dogs do, in the way my other dogs had done. She is a wonderful dog, loving, intelligent, fun. But the sheep just did not seem to be responding to her the way they always do to my border collies.

  I thought about attachment theory, I thought about communicating. I began to ask myself some questions, rather than focus all of my intentions and expectations on her. I asked myself: What did I want from this dog? Was I expecting another Red, the perfect working dog in almost every way? Was I playing to the crowd, perhaps worrying more about the people watching me than the dog I was supposed to love and train?

  I consulted with two friends who are herding trainers and asked them to come to the farm to backstop me. They said I was doing everything right, that the training was good. They both noticed that Fate seemed to be having fun but did not seem all that interested in the herding part. She gave strong eye, but she didn’t seem to mean it the way Red and most border collies mean it.

  See if that develops, they said, politely urging me to consider her interest in the nitty-gritty details of sheepherding.

  With that in mind, I decided to take my own advice and talk to her, to see if I could get a sense from her what she wanted to do, what kind of dog she really was and wanted to be.

  I took Fate out in the pasture one cold February morning. I didn’t give the usual commands. Instead I released her—told her she was free—and she ran out into the pasture and began circling the sheep. I didn’t walk her up to them, ask her to slow down, or tell her to “give eye.”

  When I watched her, I saw that she wasn’t moving in; she wasn’t developing authority. But she was having fun. She burst out running, circling and circling the sheep. Every time she got close to them, they either challenged her or blew her off. This would have made Red crazy, but it didn’t bother Fate at all. Released of the burden of moving the sheep, she was having the time of her life, and the sheep were happily grazing, comfortable around this strange little creature who was practically dancing all around them.

  I called her to me, and we sat down on the ground together. I closed my eyes, focused on her, imagined her herding the sheep in classic border collie fashion, then changed the image, and imagined her running, walking alongside me and Maria, being near the sheep but not really responsible for moving them.

  Suddenly I felt a strong sense of release myself, free of this burden of training, the sense of pushing a boulder uphill, the feeling of straining and pushing this wonderful creature into being something she was not.

  I thought of my father, who had pushed me so hard to be an athlete, calling me a sissy, undermining my confidence and character. I thought of Homer, the ungainly little dog who kept lagging behind on our walks.

  I asked myself one of the best questions I could ask when talking to an animal: was I doing this for them, or for me?

  I loved Fate very much and I was thrilled to have her and be with her. She was perfect for me and for Maria, a family dog who could go anywhere and do anything. She did not have a mean or aggressive bone in her body.

  That day, I got the answer I had been seeking. It was simple, and I was sure it was coming from her. The message came to me clear as a bell:

  I’m not Red. I don’t want to be Red. That was it. That was all I heard, and it was more than enough.

  I dropped the herding training that morning. Despite her lineage I gave up on the idea that she was going be a working dog.

  She was going to be a happy dog, a family dog, a loved and appreciated dog. To this day, she still loves working with us. Every morning she rushes to the gate, runs to the sheep, greets them, circles around them, runs back and forth around the pasture, wears herself out, and has a blast.

  So do we. My relationship to Fate has changed, just as my own relationship with my father might have changed if he had listened to me. If he had let me be who I was, and not who he wanted me to be.

  We live in sweet harmony with Fate. There is nothing between us but love and connection. She comes when called, sits when asked, stays when commanded. She never runs off or goes near the road. “Wow,” I’ve told Maria, “we have the dog we wanted.” We always did, but I didn’t even know it until I listened.

  Epilogue

  What They Told Me, What They Taught Me

  I began talking to animals more than half a century ago, the day when Lucky began one of the most spiritual and transformative periods of my life. I wish I could go back and time and talk to Lucky. I wish I could talk to the frightened but willful little boy who fought so hard to get him, and who learned so much from him.

  Look what happened, I want to say. Look what you started.

  On a fall day not long ago, I took my dogs, Fate and Red, out to the deep woods to reflect on the decades I’ve spent living in harmony with animals, to think about how far I’d come. The woods are our cathedral, our holy place. There is an old stone bench far out in the woods that was built many years ago, perhaps for the purposes of rest and contemplation.

  I sat down on the bench, put my camera down, and watched the sunlight burst through the forest canopy. I listened to the dew falling off the trees, watched the dogs chase hopelessly after the nimble chipmunks, and heard a hawk’s lonely cry.

  At this point, the dogs know me; we understand each other. When I sit down like that, they check out every smell on the ground, then come over to sit down nearby. Sometimes they need to think about things, too. It is a beautiful place to sit, and I am grateful to have been introduced to it by Maria, who discovered the bench on one of her walks and brought me there. It is a sacred place.

  Lucky

  I thought of Lucky first, of course. Lucky told me that I was not what I feared I was, not what my father told me I was, not what the bullies screamed at me on the way home. He told me I had strength, and that there were good people in the world, that good things could happen. He made me see that there was love in the world for me and that I was a good person whose story was important.

  * * *

  Orson

  O
rson, my border collie, told me that I needed to change my life. You are unhappy, he said. Your spirit is draining out of you, you are giving up on life. You do not belong where you are living, you are called to your adventure. It is never too late to change. It is time to leave the ordinary world behind, to set out on your hero journey.

  * * *

  Julius and Stanley

  My yellow Labs, Julius and Stanley, were the first dogs in my adult life who helped me become a writer. When I spent a year living alone with them in my upstate cabin—the beginning of my adventure—they were with me every moment. They sat with me through a difficult winter, were by my side when I wrote, sat with me outside when I read my Thomas Merton journals, walked with me in the woods as I learned how to live in nature. They seemed to tell me that it was natural for me to be a writer, that I could do it. In accepting my new life so graciously, they helped give me the strength to live. They marked this critical passage in my life, and left me when it was done. I will always recall the superstorms of that winter, all three of us curled up in bed, the snow piling up outside the windows, the wind shrieking through the chimney.

  * * *

  Elvis

  Elvis, the Swiss steer, taught me to be wiser and more thoughtful about my life with animals. We are not all pets, he said. Big and powerful and hungry animals like me are not meant to be companions for people. We have a different destiny.

  * * *

  Winston

  In many parts of the animal world, we are taught that it is never humane to help animals leave the world. Winston, my ten-year-old rooster, taught me a different lesson. Early in his life, his right leg was injured when he tried to defend his hens from a hawk attack. He limped for the rest of his days. He was a gentle, regal, but conscientious rooster, always looking out for his hens. When he fell ill at the end of his life, he told me he didn’t want to die with the other chickens pecking at his eyes, as they do with sick brethren. He lay dying for two days, protected by the barn cats, who loved him. I heard his message. I took him out to the pasture, dug a hole in the ground, shot him, and, after saying a few words of respect and gratitude, laid him down. I could almost feel him thanking me. Mercy means many different things in the animal world.