A Dog Year Read online

  A Dog Year

  * * *

  Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

  Jon Katz

  Villard

  New York

  Copyright © 2002 by Jon Katz

  Excerpt from Going Home copyright © 2011 by Jon Katz.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Villard Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc. Colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Epigraph on quotation page is reprinted from

  Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

  by Donald McCaig, by special arrangement with Lyons Press,

  New York, N.Y.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Katz, Jon.

  A dog year: twelve months, four dogs, and me / Jon Katz.

  p. cm.

  1. Dogs—New Jersey—Anecdotes. 2. Dogs—Behavior—New Jersey—Anecdotes. 3. Katz, Jon. 4. Human-animal relationships—New Jersey—Anecdotes. I. Title.

  SF426.2 .K38 2001 636.7′09749—dc21 2001045506

  Villard Books website address: www.villard.com

  This book contains an excerpt from Going Home by Jon Katz. This excerpt has been set for this edition and may not reflect the final content of the book.

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-114-1

  v3.0_r2

  Table of Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Postscript

  Caution

  Excerpt from Going Home

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Jon Katz

  In our culture, humans with a special knack for animals have always been thought queer, or worse.

  Learning a dog’s worldview, altering it (within bounds), accepting a dog’s understanding as sometimes more reliable than a man’s—these commonplace tools of dog training are a mild cultural treason. . . . The truly dangerous inhabit a reality most of us can scarcely imagine—every day they share the thoughts, habits, tics and aspirations of a genuinely alien mind.

  —Donald McCaig,

  Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men

  Introduction

  Perfect Harmony

  * * *

  When I was in the fourth grade, I got up before dawn one morning, braving a bitter winter in Providence, Rhode Island, and headed for my elementary school to be sure that I was first in line.

  The school janitor was giving away a puppy.

  I waited, shivering, for several hours, fighting to defend my spot against some enormous sixth-graders. But I held my ground and brought home Lucky, also shivering, in a cardboard box. It was the happiest day of my life.

  I can’t remember what kind of dog he was, only that we’d had him for a few weeks when he got distemper, then disappeared. My parents told me that he was sick and had to recover on a farm out in the country, where he could roam freely.

  Weeks later, in response to my badgering and increasingly agitated demands to visit him, my father told me that Lucky was “very sick” and would have to stay on the farm for a long time, perhaps for good. Then he took me to Rigney’s Ice Cream Parlor on Hope Street and bought me a black raspberry cone. Excursions with my father were a rare thing, reserved for the most extraordinary occasions. My father never said a word as we slurped our cones, and neither did I.

  I was young but not stupid. It would be years before I loved any dog that much again.

  Next came Sam, the first dog who was more or less mine. He was an iron-willed basset hound with whom my mother warred relentlessly over where he slept (on my bed), where he napped (on the new living room sofa), and what he ate (anything that wasn’t locked away).

  Sam was fearless. Every time my mother pulled into the driveway, she looked up to see him relaxing on the new sofa, located in the bay window on the side of the house. By the time she rushed inside, he’d be sitting innocently on the floor, but she whaled him with a rolled-up newspaper anyway. I admired the way Sam stood up to her tirades and temper and took his medicine. He never flinched, ran, or hid; nor did he ever stop dozing on the couch.

  One Friday night, with about fifteen members of our extended family gathered around my mother’s new dining room table, which sat proudly atop a new Oriental carpet she had saved for years to buy, Sam calmly strolled up, put his front paws on the table, clamped his strong jaws onto the steaming pot roast, and yanked it away.

  My grandmother, who didn’t believe that Jews ought to have dogs in the first place, started screaming in Yiddish.

  Clearly Sam’s plan was to light out for the basement—the door was just a few feet away—where he’d wolf down as much meat as possible before the authorities caught up with him. He never got that far.

  My mother, shrieking in fury, headed him off at the kitchen doorway and Sam led her on a desperate chase around the table, dragging the meat with him, leaving a trail of gravy and grease along her new carpet.

  I don’t know how long this would have gone on—we were all too astonished by Sam’s daring act to move, and my sister and I were silently rooting for him anyway—but my big brother finally knocked his chair over to block Sam’s route and tackled him.

  Even as he went down and was hauled off in a din of curses, whacks, and recriminations, Sam was gobbling as much of the entrée as he could. He had calculated the price, weighed the odds, and gone for it. Sam was the bravest dog I ever knew.

  His obstinacy could be irritating, of course. Every night, Sam climbed onto my bed, positioned himself between me and the wall, and began pushing me toward the edge. But if I tried to shove him back, he’d nip my hand and growl me away. Once or twice a week he’d muscle me right off onto the floor. If anybody came in to see what caused the thump, Sam would be snoring peacefully.

  We moved to New Jersey when I was in high school. In the days of packing and farewells beforehand, Sam suddenly vanished. My mother was vague about where he had gone. At first, she said, she had tried to give him to a neighbor, but he’d immediately bitten every person in the family, which sounded like Sam, all right. So she’d found him a farm in northern Rhode Island where he could, she said, roam freely.

  I wish I had gotten to say goodbye.

  There have been others. Before Lucky, my family had included a foul-tempered German shepherd named King, who regularly took off after milkmen and mail carriers until my mother sorrowfully had to send him away. After my wife and I married, we adopted a russet-colored mutt named Bean who looked like a fox. She kept us faithful company for years but was more my wife’s dog than mine. Clarence was a crotchety golden retriever bought on impulse at a puppy mill; I loved him despite his grumpiness and many health problems.

  Once in a great while, however, the right person is fortunate enough to get the right dog, to have the time to take care of it, to connect with it in a profound way. It takes a confluence of luck and timing, being at a particular point in life that coincides with the nature, breeding, and disposition of a particular dog. By the spring of 2000, I was lucky enough to have not one but two dogs with whom I had come to live in great harmony, two genial, purebred yellow Labrador retrievers I’d gotten from a breeder in northern New Jersey.<
br />
  All the things that needed to converge did. I was working at home, writing. The dogs were attentive, smart, calm, and loving. They also had that meditative Lab quality of being able to disappear into themselves for extended periods, leaving me in peace when I needed it.

  I hired a trainer to train me, to teach me to teach them how to come, sit, stay, lie down, and walk reliably beside me without leashes. Professional dog trainers and handlers understand that their real work is to train dogs’ owners. Dogs more or less know what they need to do. The issue is almost always how to communicate what you want from them, in a positive yet effective way. It cost a few hundred dollars, and most people will tell you it isn’t worth it, but they are dead wrong. When it comes to dogs, it was the best buy of my life, returning the cost with interest in myriad ways.

  We hardly had a bad moment, the three of us, so neatly did we fit together, interlocking pieces of the puzzle that is the varied partnership between humans and dogs.

  Julius and Stanley embodied the noblest characteristics of their proud breed. They were handsome, loyal, utterly dependable, and affectionate. Julius came first. My daughter was young, and while there are different viewpoints about this, I personally don’t believe there’s a more rewarding moment for a parent than handing a happy, squirming, doe-eyed Lab puppy over to a small kid. I carry the look on her face in my memory, and while there are times when I can’t remember what day of the week it is, I can always recall the wonder and joy in her eyes as if it had just happened.

  Although I bought the dog with my daughter in mind, she was soon playing computer games and collecting garish-looking dolls, and I was out in the chill winter mornings cheering and exulting when a puzzled but earnest puppy took a dump outside.

  Julius became mine, of course, the two of us bonding as if by Krazy Glue.

  A year later, the breeder called and invited me to take a ride with my daughter to see the new litter. I was just looking, I assured my muttering and incredulous wife, Paula, who’d dragged Julius’s old plastic dog crate out of the basement, ready to house its new resident, before I’d left the driveway.

  My daughter and I returned with tiny, heart-melting Stanley. Julius was initially dubious about this new pest he had to contend with, but within a couple of days the two Labs loved each other as much as I loved them both, and they loved me and my family and, well, everybody who passed by.

  It was a happy relationship from the first, and it only grew better, more comfortable. Both dogs were housebroken within days, settling happily into hours of rawhide-chewing.

  Our lifestyles, as they say, meshed perfectly. Neither dog had much interest in running around.

  Their great genius was doing nothing in particular with great style and dedication. Both disdained traditional canine tasks such as pursuing squirrels or rabbits, digging, or destroying property. Their chosen work was to reflect on the state of the world, lick neighborhood kids, and accompany me through midlife.

  In the morning, neither dog moved a muscle until I did; then both slithered into bed for a family cuddle. After I was up and dressed, they sat quietly and attentively beneath the kitchen table, staring hypnotically at their food bowls, as if the power of their gazes would conjure up something tasty.

  After breakfast, the early walk through our pleasant suburban neighborhood was leisurely, Julius and Stanley forensically sniffing along behind. Certain shrubs and rocks were always carefully inspected, each at a quite deliberate pace, the only area in which they would not compromise. Nothing could rush them; they’d go over every millimeter of a sapling’s bark, undistractedly, until satisfied. A rabbit could hop right by—and sometimes did—without interrupting them.

  For a half hour or so, the dogs proceeded at such stately paces and behaved so dependably that I was free to think about the coming day, what I wanted to write, how I wanted to write it. Our walks were tranquil, interrupted only by a stream of friends and admirers, from dog buddies to school-bus drivers.

  Despite their historic roles as hunting dogs, however, they disdained rain and snow, and in inclement weather mastered a convenient hundred-yard dash to the nearest tree, then turned and hustled back inside.

  Then it was time for work. I prepared a sandwich for each, taking two big rawhide chews and slathering a layer of peanut butter in between. Jules and Stanley carried the concoctions to the backyard and settled in for a deliberate gnaw, after which they were spent, and needed to refresh themselves with a long rest.

  If the weather was fine, the dogs would spend much of the morning dozing in the yard. They might rouse themselves to bark at a passing dog. Mostly not.

  On unpleasant days, they came into my study and offered themselves as footrests, both tucked underneath my desk, one on my left, one on my right.

  I never had to provide much in the way of instruction. These guys knew how to relax. When the computer chimed as it booted up (I am an unswerving Macintosh man), the dogs dropped to the floor as if they’d been shot. They didn’t move until they heard the monitor thunk off, at which point they’d rise (cautiously), ready for another stroll.

  After a year or so, Julius and Stanley had achieved a Labrador state of grace, the ability to become an organic part of your life rather than an intrusion into it.

  For a writer, having two such quiet and patient companions is a godsend. They warded off loneliness. They also kept me from a purely sedentary existence. After lunch, we’d rack up another mile or two at our usual unhurried pace.

  Through the day, I supplied rawhide chews, pigs’ ears, indeterminable and smelly dried bull parts, and a rain of treats and biscuits. It was ridiculously indulgent, of course, but I could not do enough for these boys, nor they for me. I tried to repay them for their love and unflagging loyalty, even though that was unnecessary and impossible.

  They had their idiosyncracies. Julius was so unconcerned about wildlife (the sort his brethren traditionally retrieved) that he’d been known to nap inches from a rabbit’s nest in the garden. And when Stanley wanted to chase a ball—which was much of the time—he would nip me in the butt to get me moving.

  Once in a great while somebody would strew the garbage around the house, in the centuries-old tradition of Labs in Newfoundland who worked with fishermen, loved the cold, wet outdoors, and had to forage for food; they got to be pretty flexible about what they’d put in their stomachs. If I left them alone in the house, they collected odd articles of clothing—my wife’s fuzzy bedroom slippers were a favorite—and slept with them.

  It had been years since either dog had been on a leash or given me reason, despite the technicalities of local leash laws, to use one. Every kid in the neighborhood knew them and waved at them from bikes and car windows, through soccer-field fences. For many, they provided the first introduction to dogs, and they set a high standard. Over the years, many people told me that Julius or Stanley had inspired them to go out and get a dog.

  When night fell, so did the Labs, settling on their cedar beds for a final rawhide snack, and descending into a deep, unmoving sleep.

  After some years—Stanley was seven and Julius eight—we moved almost like a school of fish, the three of us veering in one direction, then another. We turned corners at the same time, sat in various parks and yards sharing lunch.

  All the one ever asked was to live, play, and work alongside me. All the other one wanted besides that was the chance to swim in ponds once in a while and chase a ball a few times a day. They got what they wanted. So did I.

  Of the various dogs in my life, Julius and Stanley were the first with whom I lived in such tranquillity. They transformed me from a dog owner into a dog lover. The three of us were as settled in our relationship as a middle-aged man and his dogs could be. Perhaps too settled.

  John Steinbeck once wrote that it was the nature of humans as they grew older to complain about change, especially change for the better. I have never really had that particular problem. Change loves me, defines and stalks me like a laser-guided smart bomb
. It comes at me in all forms, suddenly and with enormous impact, from making shifts in work to having and raising a kid to buying a cabin on a distant mountaintop. Sometimes, change comes on four legs.

  One

  Welcome to Newark Airport

  * * *

  He was a two-year-old border collie of Australian lineage, well-bred but high-strung, and in big trouble. He had been shown at obedience trials in the Southwest. But something had gone very wrong with this arrangement and his breeder had taken him back and was working to find him a home. He needed one badly, she told me. That was all I knew about Devon when I drove to Newark Airport to pick him up.

  I already had two sweet dogs and I had plenty of non-dog-related responsibilities as well. I wasn’t particularly keen on taking in a third dog.

  But this breeder, who kept a fierce eye on her dogs even after they’d left her kennels, had been e-mailing me for a while. She’d read a book of mine called Running to the Mountain, which featured Julius and Stanley, not only as coverdogs but as major characters.

  She called me up; before long we were spending hours on the phone. Deanne wasn’t pushing me, she kept saying, but she believed this dog belonged with me. She meant to make it happen.

  I’d been fascinated by border collies for years, poring over books like The Versatile Border Collie by Janet Larson, browsing Web sites where owners post stories of their dogs’ weird behavior, exchanging tentative e-mails with breeders. They were such intelligent dogs, I’d read, and somehow exotic. But everyone I consulted said more or less the same thing: unless you have a hundred acres right outside your back door, don’t do it. I had only a normal suburban New Jersey yard—and did I mention that I already had two large dogs?