A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life

by Jon Katz

  The contrast was striking, and over time, sad. Rose had the innate ability to understand the task at hand and get it done. Like any young border collie, she needed to be taught how to stay calm and move slowly; she couldnt be allowed to run amok. But shed arrived with most of the instinct she needed; all I had to do was give her time and reinforcement. Orson, on the other hand, had suffered the misfortune of so many dogs: He had gotten involved with humans. Roses behavior with the sheep was measured and authoritative. She never used her mouth to control them; she used her body and intense eye, the stare border collies employ to move sheep and intimidate other animals, and the sheep moved as she directed. After the first few weeks, I could simply say, Go get the sheep, and Rose would rocket up the hill, give the herd the eye, square off for a few moments with the ram, and get behind the herd. Then-there was never any doubt of the outcome-she and the flock would come trotting down the hill and into the pen. She was all business, undistractable, energetic and fearless. As my father often said during his fruitless efforts to turn me into a baseball player, Youve got to keep your eye on the ball. Rose did. This was the difference, I thought, between a dog who had been given the opportunity to learn and grow safely and properly, and a dog who hadnt. It was wonderful to work with Rose, sad to see the excitable wreck that Orson, in some ways, had become. I had thought Rose would learn some things from Orson, from the herding dog I was sure he could become, once sheep were living out the back door. But after the first few weeks, the truth seemed increasingly evident: We were all learning from Rose; none of us had much to teach her. With little training at all, she was evolving into a cracker-jack farm dog-eager, bright, savvy, and profoundly useful. Wheres Rose? the large-animal vet would say when she pulled up in her pickup. Lots of her clients brought their dogs out to work when she arrived, she told me, but only Rose actually helped, keeping sick sheep still, rounding up runaways trying to avoid their shots. I nearly burst with pride. Rose was one of those working dogs completely at ease on the job, though never completely relaxed otherwise. She was as comfortable backing up a big, bullying ram as she was out of place in New Jersey. It was hard to reconcile this businesslike, energetic creature with the trembling puppy I had toted from Denver. Our training evolved. I decided against hiring a herding instructor or taking her to a class. I decided to let her gifts develop naturally and see what happened. I did a lot of things the herding instructors recommended-initially brought her near sheep on a leash, for instance, to discourage running around. But I also did a lot of things they didnt recommend, like letting her into the pasture alone. I watched from the gate as she approached the sheep, her eye and her instincts sharpening almost daily. She wasnt a dog to race around willy-nilly; she always seemed to have a purpose. Most mornings, she would rush halfway up the hill-the flock had almost always drifted up to the top for the night-and take in the situation. She looked to the right, then the left, surveying the scattered sheep, until she reached some sort of conclusion. This was critical, an Irish friend and herding guru had cautioned me. You stay quiet and let her make some decisions. Via e-mail and telephone calls, other trainers conveyed their disapproval. Theres a right way and a wrong way to herd sheep, one trainer scolded. You need lessons-youll mess her up. But working with Rose was a great experience. Im happy we did it our own way. Each morning, after mulling the situation, Rose moved one way or the other, quickly or slowly, to gather the flock and bring it down to me. She carried in her head a manual of some sort that showed how things ought to work. I didnt have one, so I decided to trust her and her burgeoning instincts. Her evolution was a beautiful thing to see. Rose was too young to herd sheep-yet she was herding sheep. She was too young to stay calm, but she did. One couldnt expect this still-gawky pup to control animals that towered over her, including a donkey that could pulverize her with a single kick. But she did. She was as calm as Orson was excited, as dauntless as he was convinced he would fail. As needy as he was of my presence and attention, Rose was almost indifferent to it. Working with her, I could see the enormous blocks that had been created in him-his excitement, confusion, aversion to commands, hyperarousal. Daily her confidence grew, her experience mounted. She was poised, assured, and you could see how proud she felt after our work was done and she trotted out the pasture gate, pausing to wag her tail and give my hand a quick lick. Day by day, she became more of a working dog, and Orson became less of one, more of a pet. We were all still settling in at the farm when the first real blizzard of the winter struck. The wind began to shriek as sheets of snow started blowing across the yard and the road. I cranked up my new woodstove and took out a bottle of Glen-livet. The dogs were inside, curled up for the night-until Rose began barking. When I looked out the window, I saw that the donkey and the sheep had escaped through the pasture gate, crossed the road, and were vanishing off into the woods. I panicked. Id never been confronted with a livestock breakout before. I didnt relish having to call Paula to tell her all my animals had vanished in the storm. It was ungrateful of them to have bolted, I thought, after Id so carefully supplied plenty of hay and fresh water and shelter. Perhaps something spooked them. Maybe I hadnt latched the gate. In any event, there were acres and acres of forest out there. I had no way of finding the sheep, of bringing them back. Orson was of no use in this predicament. If we did manage to locate the animals, they would just run farther at the sight of him. Rose looked at me eagerly with her send-mein-coach look. We headed outside. Go get em, girl, I yelled, having little choice. The puppy-at this point barely six months old-disappeared into the woods. A half hour later, huffing and puffing, cursing the cold and snow and yearning for that warm fire and glass of scotch back at the farmhouse, I followed the sounds of barking off in the deep woods. When I stumbled to where she was, I saw in my flashlights beam that she had rounded up the whole gang-sheep, ram, and donkey. Nobody was going anywhere, as she barked, circled, and nipped. In an open forest, Rose was the fence. She maneuvered behind the animals and, with me leading the procession, we marched them down a long path, through the meadow, and back across the road. I closed the gate behind them, piling trash cans and boards against it for good measure. Rose, clearly, had found her destiny. All the things I had been working so hard with Orson to do were things she did naturally, instinctually. No longer the novice, she was maturing into the Queen of Bedlam, while the notion of Orsons ever being a working dog-something important to me, and, I believed, to him-began to fade. Perhaps something in his proud, needy spirit perished as well. Rose knew without coaching how to separate the donkeys (soon there were two, later three) from the sheep. She guarded the gate if it swung open, halted the sheep at the road if we were crossing to graze. During lambing season, she alerted me when lambs were born, kept mothers and babies together while they bonded, marched ewes and their newborns into the barn where theyd be dry and warm. Soon, other farmers were calling to borrow her for particularly demanding tasks. We put down barnyard riots, herded errant goats, held roaming cows at bay. We charged ten dollars for house calls, and before long a couple of hundred dollars had accumulated in the basket on my desk, money destined for dog-rescue groups. We became partners in the oldest, most traditional, way of dogs and humans. Living with Rose, I understood why dogs had been domesticated in the first place. I was acutely conscious of what a dog like her might have meant to a farmer a century ago. Something elemental had changed. Border collies need work, and Orson was intensely eager to find it. As Carolyn had predicted, and as I knew too well, the world would not make sense to him until he did. But when he did, it wasnt the kind of work one saw border collies doing on cable shows or at herding trials. Orsons work became me. And that had to be enough.

  Equilibrium came to the farm slowly that first year. The weather soon grew harsh and bleak. I had little understanding of how to manage feed, hay, and water in upstate New Yorks worst winter in forty years. I was overwhelmed by the physical brutality of our daily routines. Carol, the donkey, fell gravely ill, necessitating many late-night walks to the barn w
ith syringes and salves. I had to administer shots and pills and wrap bandages. Hauling corn and grain to the ewes, dragging hoses across the icy tundra that was my driveway so the flock would have water, lugging fifty-pound bales of hay up the hill-I found it challenging, enthralling, battering. Id foolishly mistimed the arrival of my ram, Nesbitt, so that the ewes gave birth in February, most of them in the middle of the night, invariably in sub-zero temperatures. Yet as my new responsibilities turned daily life upside down, Orson achieved a certain steadiness that had always eluded him. Probably it wasnt easy for him to watch Rose and me enter the pasture without him. It wasnt an easy thing for me, either. He always wanted to come with me-everywhere-so he ran to the door. Excluded, he then sat at the window, watching, waiting until I returned. But he found compensations. The farm was quiet in the winter, with few visitors and distractions. I still worked with him each morning, but we simply went out to the pasture, and after he circled the pen a few times, I showered him with praise. He was feeling successful, I thought, or at least feeling like a failure less often. With deadlines looming and the bitter weather discouraging roaming, I felt less guilty than normal about holing up inside to work. I noticed that Orson came to see my work as his responsibility, too. When the computer hummed to life, he plopped down on the floor next to me, his head often resting on my right foot. Soon he would sigh deeply and go to sleep. Rose loved to sit out in the yard on the bitterest days, so she could keep an eye on her sheep. She had no interest in my work, only hers. Sometimes, when I went out to call her, Rose was nearly invisible, covered with snow. She popped up out of the whiteness, shook herself off, and rushed into the house-straight through to the back door, hoping to go back outside and collect some sheep. She would happily have lived outside, the better to guard her flock. Orson was different, and perhaps we were all becoming more comfortable with that. I appreciated his companionship through that awful winter. His time with me by the computer, as the woodstove crackled, became our work together. I loved having him so close as I wrote. Often, because I didnt want to disturb him, my leg ached from keeping it so still. A soulful, peaceful side of him emerged that had been harder to see out in Carolyns pasture or back in New Jersey. While I clacked away at the keyboard, this once restless creature would lie contentedly for hours. If I reached down to stroke or pat him, he licked my hand, met my eyes, thumped his tail a couple of times, then went back to sleep. In this way, day after day, we wrote a book together. His newfound peacefulness was infectious. Once again, I marveled at the diverse, complex nature of dogs, the myriad ways in which they work their way into our hearts. Whenever I looked down at Orson, I smiled. To own such a dog is not, as many readers know, a simple thing. It requires vigilance and spawns anxiety. Will he take off after some poor dog walking down the road? Break through the screen door after a chipmunk? Terrorize the oil deliveryman? One could rarely relax around a dog like Orson, yet that winter, in my office, as the temperatures outside plummeted and the winds whistled, I did relax, and so, I think, did he. He had found work he loved to do, that he was very good at. The next six months were the most peaceful, I think, of Orsons complicated life. When spring finally came, we took several walks through the day, sometimes into the woods, sometimes down to Black Creek for a swim. He tore through the meadow, diving for field mice and moles, rolling in deer scat, erupting in joyous bursts of energy. He rarely had much to do with sheep, but he didnt seem to care. Neither did I. Finally, the pressure seemed to lift a bit. He was content. He was even gracious to-or at least tolerant of-little Clementine, my sweet-faced new Lab puppy. Im very partial to border collies. I love their intensity, intelligence, and affection, the energy they exude and demand from their humans. But I missed having Labs. Julius and Stanley were as delightful and affable companions as Id ever had. I wanted a simple dog, one happy to hang around, doze at my feet, watch a Yankees game. So I pestered Pam Leslie, a highly regarded breeder in Vermont, until she told me about a litter that included a couple of yellow Labs. Then I pestered her to sell me one. Clementine was pure Labrador: nothing was too disgusting for her to gobble up; she rarely took offense; she loved most living things, including sheep and donkeys. Orson did not play, and had little patience for dogs that did, but he took a lot of stuff from Clem, who grabbed his biscuits and chewbones, tore through the house annoying him, and vied shamelessly for my affection. Once or twice he growled a warning to get away, but generally he seemed amused and never intimidated her the way he had Homer. Clem loosened the place up, getting Rose to play hide-and-seek once in a while. She even got Orson to relax. She and I were soon watching baseball together on the sofa, Clem stretched out next to me, snoring through the innings. She was a lovely addition. The only trouble we had was when somebody came to visit-delivery person or friend, it didnt seem to matter much-and Orson hurled himself almost hysterically at the door or gate. But otherwise, he appeared-for him-at ease. Perhaps were finally getting it, I thought.