The Dogs of Bedlam Farm : An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me
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Acknowledgments Thanks to Paula Span and Emma Span for so many things, including rushing to my rescue when I needed them. Blood is, in fact, thicker than anything. Thanks to Richard Abate and Bruce Tracy. Particular thanks to Brian McLendon for his friendship and unwavering advocacy. And to Julie Kurland for her support of my work. Thanks to Anthony Armstrong, his wife, Holly, and daughter, Ida, and the Hanks clan, especially Dean and Darrow. Thanks to Jane Richter. Ray and Joanne Smith have been dear friends and fellow pilgrims on the road to paradise. Vickie Maxwell, Don Coldwell, Louise Jones, and Nancy Fortier have been great help; so has Jacob Worthington, a valued friend and aide. Thanks to his mother Barbara and to Mary Zeller, and also to my neighbors Adam Matthews, Christopher Wirkki, and Jeremy and Andrea Harrington. And to the Reverend Bill Hoffman and the choir and congregation of the West Hebron United Presbyterian Church. I will always be grateful to Deanne Veselka for bringing Orson, Homer, and Rose into my life. Thanks also to Pam Leslie and Heather Waite. I appreciate Meg and Rob Southerland and Becky MacLachlan, role models in so many ways. My gratitude also to Pat Freund, Sheila Blais and Nancy Masson, John Sweenor, Nancy and Jamie Higby, Jim and Maryann Boyter. And to Ralph and Jesse Corey, Patty and Tom Calabrese, Ginny Tremblay, and Loren Tucker for making Bedlam Farm mine. I am indebted to Dr. Debra Katz and Tagalie Heister of the University of Kentucky for their perspectives on human-animal attachment and for invaluable research help. Deep thanks to Alice and Harvey Hahn for helping me to manage an inherently unmanageable place. And to Dr. Daniel Garfinkel and Barbara Pratt. Steve Saunders, Wanda Finney, Sandy Hickland, and Jeremy Shapiro of A&J Agway provided patient counsel and helped me and my farm survive the winter. The sheep, dogs, donkeys, and I have many reasons to be grateful to Drs. Mary Menard, Jen Steeves, and Whitney Pressler and the staff of the Borador Animal Hospital in Salem, New York: Kiersten DeDeo, Katie Hahn, Laura Newton, Melissa Wicks, Jon Nelson, Laurie Lourie, Melissa Rushinski, Laura Periard, Pat Albrecht, Penny Saddlemire, Suzanne Benjamin, Karen Washburn, Derrick Keath, and Maria Sherman. And I deeply appreciate Drs. Amanda Alderink and Kirk C. Ayling and staffers Rose Smith and Kathy McGraw at the Granville Large Animal Veterinary Service. All these men and women define the very notion of compassionate care for animals. Thanks also to Danny Thomas of Thomas Farms and to Ken Norman. I am grateful to Cindy Barnes of the Sykes Hollow Kennels in Dorset, Vermont, for the wonderful care she gave my dogs. Im beholden to Margaret Waterston for first suggesting that I write about dogs. Many thanks to Sharon, Hank, Max, and Eva Hersch. I salute the late Julius and Stanley, as excellent a pair of dogs as any human can live with, and Homer, who finally got what he deserved. And I am forever grateful to Carolyn Wilki for her friendship and insights into the true nature of dogs, guidance that finally set me on the path to understanding and doing right by these amazing creatures.
Jon Katz with Jane and Rose PHOTO: JOANNE SMITH JON KATZ has written thirteen books-six novels and seven works of nonfiction-including A Dog Year and The New Work of Dogs. A two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, he has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Wired, and the AKC Gazette. A member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, he writes a column about dogs for the online magazine Slate and is cohost of Dog Talk, a monthly show on Northeast Public Radio. Katz lives on Bedlam Farm in upstate New York and in northern New Jersey, with his wife, Paula Span, who is a Washington Post contributing writer and a teacher at Columbia University, and their dogs. He can be e-mailed at jonkatz3@comcast.net or at jdkat3@aol.com.
ALSO BY JON KATZ The New Work of Dogs A Dog Year Geeks Running to the Mountain Virtuous Reality Media Rants Sign Off Death by Station Wagon The Family Stalker The Last Housewife The Fathers Club Death Row
Copyright 2004 by Jon Katz
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Katz, Jon. The dogs of Bedlam Farm: an adventure with sixteen sheep, three dogs, two donkeys, and me / Jon Katz. p. cm. eISBN 1-58836-430-5 1. Dogs-New York-West Hebron-Anecdotes. 2. Dogs-Behavior-New York-West Hebron-Anecdotes. 3. Katz, Jon. 4. Farm life-New York-West Hebron-Anecdotes. 5. Bedlam Farm (West Hebron, N.Y.)-Anecdotes. 6. Human-animal relationships-New York-West Hebron-Anecdote. I. Title.
SF426.2.K3824 2004 636.7'009747'51-dc22 2004054966
Photos on Title pages by Jon Katz
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