The Dogs of Bedlam Farm Read online

  So I called the only person I knew who would completely understand: my sister. “Of course I understand that this is unbearable for you,” she said. “You think you’re about to send Homer to the hell we grew up in.”

  Yet as a veteran dog rescuer, she also understood the animal nature of dogs. “He’ll be happier. He’ll adapt. And he’ll be close enough so that you and Paula can watch and make sure.” The family I was describing was every dog rescuer’s dream, she pointed out: somebody at home almost all the time, everyone eager for a dog, young kids with energy, always somebody to play with and cuddle.

  “He’s had a great life with you,” she told me. “But if he can’t get what he wants with you and you can’t get what you want with him, it’s okay to let him go. You’re not doing to him what was done to us. It’s different, and it’s all right.”

  An astounding thing, I thought. Finally, we were acting like a brother and sister, each helping the other out, with dogs as the vehicle.

  KEEPING CLOSE WATCH ON HOMER OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I could see that Jane was right. Max’s whole family lined up to snuggle and play with him. Homer could give these people everything that was expected from a pet and more, and he could get all the affection he needed without having to fight for it. No frustrated owner issuing herding commands, no dominant big brother, no obnoxious puppy.

  I asked Hank if he would be willing to have Homer stay there for a few days; if it went well, I said, we could talk about extending the visit further. They’d all love it, he said. I decided to drop Homer off, then take the other two dogs upstate. If things worked out, I would bring Homer up at Christmastime so our family could say its proper farewells. If things didn’t, I’d drive down in a few days and take Homer back. We agreed that Paula would come by to check on things, and that Hank or Sharon and I would talk regularly, as long as necessary for us all to feel at ease and reach a mutual decision.

  That night Paula and I sat in stone-faced silence and took turns hugging and stroking Homer. I was truly heartsick, going over the choices again and again. Homer would do better as an only dog. He needed a less frenetic life than I lived on Bedlam Farm with the sheep and two other crazy border collies. He needed to be the focus of love and attention. He was powerfully connected to Max, who would probably live at home for most of the rest of Homer’s life. Everyone in the family was aching for a dog, and everyone loved Homer. It made enormous sense, yet it felt utterly wrenching.

  The next morning, Homer hopped into bed and snuggled with me more affectionately than I could remember. We went for a long walk together before sunrise.

  Then I left him in the backyard with Orson and Rose, and took his crate to Max’s house down the street, along with a carton of bones, treats, and food. Inside the house, I silently reassembled the crate, lined with his favorite sheepskin and quilt. Then I put Homer on a leash, and Paula and I walked him to what might be his new home. When I handed the leash to Sharon, Homer looked at me nervously; he started to follow me out, then stopped, restrained by the leash. Walking home, I could hear him barking all the way down the block.

  That night, on my late-evening walk with Orson and Rose, I saw a dog on a leash coming around the corner. Rose went wild, and Orson began thumping his tail. It was Homer. The sight of somebody else walking my dog, a creature I had loved for several years but had failed, struck deep and hard.

  “Is it okay?” yelled Sharon, trying to be sensitive.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Homer came running over to us, tail wagging, excited and confused. “Goodbye, boy,” I said, at first walking past him, then turning back to lean down, stroke his head, and kiss him on the nose. He seemed anxious and bewildered, started to follow me, yelped in alarm when Sharon drew him away. His yelps sliced through me like bullets. I turned away and kept walking, feeling as if I’d left a part of myself behind. And of course, I had.

  The next morning, we returned to Bedlam.

  TWO MONTHS LATER, HOMER CAME UP FOR CHRISTMAS WEEK with Paula and Emma. I didn’t think this sort of reunion was something we should do too often. Homer had earned his new life, and returning to ours had to be confusing and difficult for him. Dogs are not like people; they don’t miss what they’ve left behind. They figure out the new rules, check out the food and the folks, and set out to do what they do best—adapt.

  The reports from New Jersey had been encouragingly effusive. Everybody loved Homer. Nobody could believe how well-trained he was. Max was in heaven; Homer walked him to the school bus and was waiting for him when he got home. He lay next to Sharon all day as she worked in her home office; he dozed on the couch next to Hank while they watched basketball games. He availed himself of a number of sleeping options—sometimes with Hank and Sharon, sometimes with Max, once in a while with Eva. Max and his friends tossed Frisbees and balls for Homer in the yard, and he was the sensation of Max’s soccer team.

  Paula saw him from time to time and said he appeared at ease, wagging as he walked along. From the phone calls I could tell he was much loved: for weeks, we’d been discussing his diet, coat, emotional state, bowel movements. Over time, as it became clearer that everybody felt very comfortable about Homer—except me—I’d stopped calling.

  When Paula pulled up at Christmas with Homer in the backseat, both Orson and Rose pounced happily on him, and he and I had a joyous reunion. Life quickly grew complex for him, of course. Orson went after his bones, and Rose mercilessly taunted him to play. Within a few hours, he looked beleaguered and wary again.

  Over the next few days, though, things sorted themselves out. Rose was more interested in the sheep, Homer was happy to tear through the woods after chipmunks, and Orson generally ignored him. In the early morning, Homer crept up onto our bed as he always had, to bestow a series of quick licks and enjoy a cuddle before retreating—under Orson’s glare—onto the dog bed on the floor.

  On the last day of his visit, I took him for what I imagined might be his last adventure with sheep, no small event in the life of a border collie. I had no doubt now that he was a happier dog, that I’d made the right decision. Nor did I have any doubt that this sad turn was my responsibility, not due to any fault or shortcoming of his. I may sometimes speak with my father’s voice but I will not knowingly make my father’s mistakes.

  When I opened the gate, Homer tore into the pasture, racing for the ewes. When I called for him to stop, he slowed down. I ran up to be near him, to make sure nobody got hurt this time. But he’d lost a step or two in his cushy suburban lifestyle, and the ewes kept their distance. By the time he caught up with them, he was winded. I came up next to him, put him in a lie-down, and sat scratching his ears while the sheep crunched peacefully on the hillside.

  He settled down. “Thanks for everything, boy,” I said. “I’m so sorry. You’re a wonderful dog. You deserved better.”

  Homer licked my hand and stared at the sheep. It was probably, I thought, the last time we’d spend together like this, for both our sakes. I was grateful for it. Maybe he was, too. At the end of the week, he drove off with Paula, his head propped on the rear window ledge of her car. He was looking back at me.

  IT’S AMAZING, THIS EMOTIONAL AURA THAT ENVELOPS US AND our dogs. The pain of Homer’s leaving has dulled, but it hasn’t vanished. It still feels as if some part of me has gone astray. I worry about him sometimes, especially at night. How do I really know if he is happy? Is he pining for us? Sometimes I think I see him, waiting by the back door to go to the sheep, or sniffing the woodpile for chipmunks.

  His is a spectral presence, invoking not only my dog, but the things the dog reminded me of, the demons he unknowingly unleashed. He was with us for three years, and the memories—his adorable puppyhood, his herding of waves and sheep, our travels across the country—don’t leave just because he did. They are woven into my neural system, forever part of my life with dogs.

  Rose and Orson and I have a bountiful love affair, but I know they are not nearly as good-natured. The neighborhood UPS and Fe
d-Ex drivers don’t love them the same way, and vice versa. Rose is a working girl, through and through, impossible to distract from her mission, the Queen of Bedlam Farm. And Orson, placid and loving though he has become, will always be an idiosyncratic grump. He’s the only dog I know who hates defenseless puppies. His only wish is to be within a few feet of me for as long as possible, a wish I’ve happily granted.

  As much as I love these two—and boy, do I—I’ll always miss Homer’s affectionate heart. How did it come to this, I sometimes wonder. But while I regret much about Homer, I don’t regret sending him off to Max and Eva and Sharon and Hank. Things didn’t work out as I’d planned, but at least I didn’t condemn him to the peripheries of love. Because he couldn’t speak, I spoke for him. What I said was: I can’t give you what you need, but I can find you somebody who will. In this, I kept faith with him.

  One bitter January night, Hank checked in for the first time in a few weeks, thanking me for the hundredth time for bringing Homer into their lives. Grandparents, neighbors, schoolmates—everyone was crazy about him.

  “A friend came by and fell in love with Homer,” Hank told me. “He told me how lucky we were to have such a sweet, easygoing dog. I can’t say enough about Homer. He’s such a truly good dog.”

  Chapter Eight

  COLD MOUNTAIN

  I THINK I HADN’T REALLY LIVED A FULL AND MEANINGFUL LIFE until those January mornings when my backyard thermometer registered twenty below zero and the wind chill was far worse—and I had to take a donkey’s temperature. Rectally.

  To my mind, my time at Bedlam Farm with the dogs was, like the geologic periods of the earth, broken up into distinct eras: preparing the farm, training the dogs, coming to terms with Homer, experiencing a magnificent autumn.

  That was the nice part. Then came life on Cold Mountain.

  Winter opened early and dramatically with a thirty-inch snowfall the first week of December. By January, it was common to see readings of minus twenty degrees in early morning as I headed out through growing layers of snow and ice to do my barn chores. The cold was relentless, draining, paralyzing. Even a half hour outside left me flushed and exhausted.

  My weather service radio channel—which I’d suddenly begun listening to as faithfully as any soap fan glued to a breathless drama—was issuing increasingly urgent warnings about extreme cold and frostbite.

  By the third or fourth snowstorm, grizzled locals stopped clucking about Flatlander sissies and started great rolling conversations about the gripping cold that had come upon us like some plague from Canada. Septic systems froze and pipes burst as the frost burrowed deeper and deeper into the ground. Tree limbs cracked and fell. Roads and driveways were coated with ice and slick snow, despite the plow trucks working day and night. Cars ditched and batteries failed and there was an epidemic of fender benders. Furnaces broke down. Toes and fingers hurt. Noses ran. It hurt to breathe sometimes.

  In the morning, when I slogged out to visit the animals, the sheep’s fleece was ice-crusted. Carol and Fanny’s eyelids and nostrils were sometimes frosted over, and I had to carefully brush them off until the sun got higher in the sky. Evenings seemed almost Siberian to me in their bleakness—a black shroud seemed to settle over everything at four P.M. The silence was deep, loud.

  As the winter descended into a brutal cycle of cold and storm, my retiring farmer friend Carr dropped by one sub-zero morning to offer some advice. “Be careful out there, young fella,” he cautioned. “I’ve been alone on a farm with animals in a winter like this. It can change a man.” I loved the line, mostly because I could practically hear Clint Eastwood saying it. But Carr was right again: it could change a man. It altered perspective, changed focus, clarified what was important.

  Maybe the severe winter, unusual even in a region accustomed to bad winters, had something to do with Carol getting seriously ill. I discovered her lying in the barn one morning at the height of the Arctic freeze, wheezing piteously, trying to give me her morning bray. It was the first time I’d seen her lying down, especially when I was carrying a bucket of her favorite oats. Donkeys, like dogs, are known best by the people who see them every day. You can sense when something is off, and something was seriously off with Carol.

  Dr. Alderink from the Granville veterinary practice arrived a few hours later in her pickup with Tyler, her coon hound, riding shotgun. Ready for anything in her boots, overalls, and knit cap, the vet gave Carol the once over, checking her eyes, taking her temperature, listening to her lungs, examining her droppings.

  “Carol, what’s wrong with you?” Dr. A. mused, prodding and poking. Since it wasn’t immediately clear what the trouble was, she decided to treat the most likely problems, prescribing a series of aggressive treatments for everything from a bacterial infection to sore hooves and the dread wasting disease called foundering. If Carol didn’t perk up, she’d try to zero in on a more precise diagnosis. The vet left me with wrappings, syringes, pills, and powders, plus instructions on how to use all of the above. If she had any doubts about my ability to minister to Carol, she didn’t let on.

  I had plenty. I wanted to run alongside her truck and yell “Wait!” as it scooted out of the driveway. How could someone who months earlier was living mostly in suburban New Jersey possibly change the wrappings on a donkey’s hooves? Or take her temperature with a rectal thermometer?

  Perhaps Dr. Amanda knew before I did that there was no choice. My farm, my animals; my responsibility. I reviewed Anthony’s Three Steps: take your head out of your ass, calm down, pay attention. Though lately I had taken to adding a Fourth Step: If all else fails, call Anthony.

  That night, I gave Carol her injections, wrapped her hooves, and took her temperature. She bucked and balked, whinnied and tried to run for it, but I persevered, calmly and with plenty of cookies. Poor Carol. The cold and her illness were bad enough; my amateur treatments would probably make her even more uncomfortable.

  Over the next few days, her condition worsened. She was lying down all the time, eating sporadically, wheezing continually. Dr. Amanda came by every day or so, but there wasn’t much more to prescribe. All we could do was wait and see.

  Anthony also began coming by more often, as he always did when trouble erupted. He summoned his father-in-law, Dean Hanks, and his brother-in-law, Darrow, from Big Green Farm in Salem, one of the largest and best known dairy farms in Washington County; they also took to stopping by.

  Nobody said anything, but I knew why they were now regular visitors. First, they’d be a great help in case Carol needed surgery or some intervention and needed to be restrained. These guys were the size of oak trees. Second, if Carol didn’t make it, they could help haul her body away. I couldn’t bury her on the farm with the ground frozen hard, but they had a bigger working farm where large animals were commonly disposed of.

  It was probably five or six days after I began treating her that Carol decided she’d had enough. That evening, she did what she always did when I reached for the thermometer—she tried to bolt. Even cookie bribery couldn’t settle her down this time, though. I couldn’t manage to close the barn door, either, held open by piles of rock-solid ice.

  I brought Rose back to assist, and she lay down in front of Carol—just as the donkey made her break. At least, probably because of the dog, Carol hesitated long enough for me to get my arms around her neck. But though she slowed down, I couldn’t completely stop her, and we wound up doing a tap dance up the slope, me holding on with one arm and struggling to put a leather halter on her with the other, all so that I could stick a thermometer up her butt. “It’s okay, Carol,” I was calling as she dragged me along. “It’s for your own good.”

  Even Anthony’s code didn’t quite cover this. I was grateful for the darkness, so my neighbors and the Hanks boys couldn’t witness this spectacle.

  In a few minutes I did manage to stop her; it helped that she was weaker than usual. I took my glove off to open the thermometer case and pull a syringe of medicine from my back p
ocket.

  It must have been then that two of my fingers got frostbitten.

  I’d heard the weather predictions and I’d pulled on layer after layer of clothing, but there was no way to manipulate syringes, halters, and medications with gloves (I learned about glove liners only later). The cold was numbing, the wind savage, but they didn’t feel all that different than on previous nights. Anyway, I was focused on Carol’s medications. After my gloves were off for about ten minutes—much too long—the fingers on my right hand began to ache and burn. But then, so did my nose, my face, damn near everything.

  I finished up with Carol, squirted an antibacterial down her throat, took her back to the barn, stuck my throbbing hand into a glove and into my pocket and ran for the house. Inside, I peeled off my outer clothing and saw that the tips of two fingers were a ghostly gray. I filled a pot with warm water, stuck them in.

  Although the pain was acute, the discoloration wasn’t deep and I could move my fingers, so I wasn’t too worried. Anyway, I’d have to wait until morning for the nearest clinic to open. (A new doctor had set up practice in Salem, happily.)

  At the clinic, I got some salve and ointments and a lecture on the stupidity of taking gloves off in this kind of weather—though when I explained about my sick donkey, the doctor and nurse stopped chiding and grew more sympathetic.

  But I grasped that bare skin can’t be exposed in such weather for that long. My fingers would be cold sensitive and in some pain every winter for the rest of my life, and the doctor warned that if I exposed them to the cold that way again, I’d suffer a worse fate.

  He also surprised me by suggesting, after an exam, that I might be suffering from hypothermia, too. The fatigue, drowsiness, and other symptoms I’d mentioned indicated a body that wasn’t able to keep itself warm. In a way, the diagnosis came as a relief. I was so tired so often, I’d been quietly afraid that something was seriously wrong. For the past two or three weeks, I’d been nodding off by late afternoon. More liquids, more rest, shorter stretches outside, the doc advised.