by Jon Katz
But even so, I was embarrassed by my grief. Perhaps that shame was due to my gender and a long-held tendency to hide emotions and bury feelings. I didn’t feel like calling up my friends or the people I worked with to tell them I was in mourning over a dog. What would they think of me? Human beings died every day in the world, and suffered illness, catastrophes, and great misfortune. What right did I have to fall to pieces over a border collie? I heard my father’s voice clearly: Suck it up.
I did not want to be one of those silly people who lost themselves in the lives of their dogs and cats. I didn’t want people to see how I felt. I told myself that Orson was just a dog, an animal. It wasn’t like he was human. Yet my grief could hardly have been worse. I admitted to myself that I had lost members of my family for whom I had not felt that much sorrow. It was a shocking thing to concede.
But the truth is that my relationship with Orson was simpler, more productive, and even more loving than many of the relationships within my human family. Losing a border collie is not like losing a parent, yet I felt closer to this crazy dog than I ever felt to my own father. And I hear this so often from other dog owners as well. How does one make sense of that?
Grief doesn’t always come with perspective. It doesn’t differentiate between the things we feel and the things we ought to feel. The love of a dog can be a powerful thing, in part, I think, because animals are a blank canvas upon which we can—and do—paint almost anything. Dogs enter our lives and imprint themselves in ways that people, and our complex relationships with them, cannot.
Maybe it would have been easier if I’d had his body cremated. Briefly, I regretted my choice. Cremation seemed simpler, more private. The process would have been more indirect and somehow neater. His body would be gone, returned to me as ashes that I could scatter in the woods or up on the hill. I told myself that there wouldn’t have been as much mourning required, but I knew that wasn’t the case.
I poured more dirt onto his grave and then tamped down the earth with heavy rocks to keep it secure. I closed my eyes, felt the cooling evening breeze slide up the hill, and offered a moment of silence. Rose watched me until I was done and then went down the hill and back to the sheep, who had drifted somewhere she didn’t want them to go for reasons I would never know.
When I came down the hill, I was determined not to tell anyone how I felt. I didn’t want to appear sentimental or, God forbid, weak. I wanted to move on. I wanted to keep perspective. I went to work. But all I could think about was Orson. I couldn’t focus. I had to talk to someone.
I called my daughter and told her Orson was dead.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “How are you?”
“Okay,” I answered.
“It must have been hard,” she said.
“No,” I told her quickly. “Not really. I made the right decision. I’m comfortable with it.”
And I wasn’t completely off. In a sense, I was comfortable with my decision. It was a good decision, well considered and thought through. Orson had bitten people, and I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t do it again. I had spent many thousands of dollars on dog trainers, psychics, pills, shamans, holistic practitioners, veterinary druggists, and acupuncture. I even ordered him some calming medicine from China. Perhaps I ought to have taken it myself. There wasn’t anything else I could do for Orson.
Though I believed I had made the right decision, I had no notion of how to process my grief. I didn’t know how to say goodbye, how to mourn the things I lost. I didn’t know how to show that pain to other human beings—an essential element of healthy grieving.
I resisted telling the people I loved how much I hurt, how much I mourned for this troubled dog. There is a community of grief where countless millions have been, dwell, or will go. When it comes to animals, that community is vast; its shared sense of pain and loss is palpable and deep. But what is it that makes the community more than something intangible, more than an idea or a notion? How do we find it? Join it? Make it real?
I think we can become a part of this healing community by acknowledging grief and loss and pain. By asking for help. By opening up. By coming to consciousness, permitting the loss and welcoming grief, revealing it, respecting it. By understanding the loss without succumbing to it.
By not allowing myself to grieve Orson and discuss my loss, I skated over the experience and failed to see its significance. The death of Orson was a watershed moment in my life. It deserved attention and respect. My reaction to his death said much about me: how closed off I was, how vulnerable, how little I really grasped of my own life. I was afraid of my grief and wouldn’t allow myself to see why his death mattered so much.
I see it better now. Orson entered my life at a time of great need. And though he had his problems, he also led me out of a place I did not want to be and guided me to a new chapter in my life. He brought me to my farm. He brought me to a life that I loved, and a person with whom I loved sharing it. He taught me limits and boundaries. He gave me perspective. He forced me to learn how to respect myself and my own decisions—a great gift. All this I came to see in time.
Perhaps it is time for this particular form of grief to come out of the closet and into the open. The loss of a beloved pet can be painful, even devastating. Mourning isn’t comfortable, but it’s a natural part of the grieving process and helps one move on.
No one is foolish for grieving for a dog or cat. A pet is rarely “just a dog” or “just a cat”; he is often an integral part of one’s life, providing a loving emotional connection that has great meaning in a complex and cruel world.
I decided to write this book, sad reader—and if you’re reading this, you probably are sad—because I thought it might be helpful.
I want to help animal lovers grieve when their pain is great.
And find perspective when it is hard to come by.
And celebrate the lives of their dogs and cats as well as mourn them.
And then move on.
My wish in writing this book is, in part, to convey the idea that the loss of a beloved dog or cat or horse does not have to be the end of something. It can be the beginning, a process as well as a loss. It is a gateway to the next experience.
Aristotle wrote that to truly know how to love something, you have to lose something. In that way, every animal I have lost has been a gift.
I want to pass along what I have learned.
I hope it helps.
TO ANTHONY ARMSTRONG
“A friend may well be reckoned
the masterpiece of nature.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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.
I’m 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 [email protected] or at [email protected].
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
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, 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.
VILLARD and “V” CIRCLED Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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.
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 pages iv and v by Jon Katz
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: 978-1-58836-430-2
v3.0_r1