by Jon Katz
When I dug the fence deeper, he jumped over it. Inside the house, he had taken apart two metal crates. One morning, he chewed a hole through the mesh in the front screen door, raced into the yard, and bit a young gardener—a Bennington College student I had hired to help that summer—on the leg, drawing blood.
I gave Orson sedatives and confined him to two rooms in the house. When I was away, he nipped the foot of the dog sitter and ran out the door and into the woods. When I came home, the road was quiet. Orson was sleeping in the garden. I did not see the young boy bicycling down the road. He saw Orson and came over to the fence to say hello to him. Orson jumped up on a garden bush and lunged at the boy’s neck, biting him severely below the chin. I watched in horror as blood spread over the boy’s shirt and down to his belt.
A neighbor, a volunteer fireman, was driving by and stopped to help. He stanched the bleeding and may have saved the boy’s life. We rushed the boy to an emergency medical clinic nearby. He needed ten stitches to his throat.
The boy’s parents were friends and fellow dog lovers. They assured me that they would not sue, although I would not have blamed them. When it was all over, I sat with Orson in the yard. I was crying. He was shaking, sensing, I’m sure, the tension and anger in me.
Orson had been sent to me in the first place because of problems with arousal; his owner had found him untrainable. The behaviorist at Tufts sat down once more with me and told me Orson was damaged, that there was nothing I or anyone else could do. To confine a border collie like Orson in a small space for life would be cruel, he said. He would fight it every minute of his life.
I received a powerful message from Orson as we sat, devastated, in the yard. It came to me in the form of an image—Orson at peace, lying by a stream. A feeling, a sensation, accompanied that image. It was a message that I heard this way: You need to help me leave. I do not know how to live in this world. You need to let me go. I do not seek to displease you, I do not wish to hurt any person. I do not know how to live in this world. I did my work. I led you here and brought you out of your unhappy life to a better place. I want to go.
Receiving these messages isn’t like hearing a spoken plea or voice mail; it’s not like getting a letter or an email. The messages come from the love of an animal, from knowing him or her, from trading emotions, offering food, understanding instincts, from experience and acclimation and trust.
I had no doubt what it was Orson was telling me. And I think there was no doubt in Orson’s mind about what I was telling him. I could never again tell myself or anyone else that I did not know what might happen, what Orson might do. I knew as I watched the blood run down that child’s shirt that I would never forget that sight, and would never permit it to happen again.
Orson was not the kind of animal who could be easily or safely confined in a small space. Nor would that be humane. In the contemporary animal world, there is this entrenched idea of the “no-kill” policy for shelters. I can’t see how it is noble or humane to confine a dog in a small crate for years and call it a loving thing to do.
My understanding of animals is very different. I can hardly imagine a crueler thing to do to a social and active animal like a dog than confine one in that way for years, for a lifetime. To me, this is the new and socially acceptable abuse of animals, this idea that they must never die, can never suffer, must live perfect and protected lives in the name of giving them rights.
Orson knew, I believe, that I could not abide what he had become. That it horrified and saddened me beyond measure, beyond words. Orson, like many animals who live with people, could sense human emotions, could smell them, read them. He understood what I was feeling. I knew I had to put him down, to take him out of this world. I knew it would be an unpopular and controversial decision. It didn’t matter. The person I had to please was me; the ethics I had to honor were mine. I did not need or seek the approval of others.
Weeks after he bit the child, after long and expensive consultations with more vets, holistic and traditional, with behaviorists, trainers, and friends, I took Orson to the vet and put him down. Afterward, I carried him up to the top of the pasture and buried him.
I was attacked for putting Orson down by scores of dog owners and animal rights activists online, and am still occasionally called a monster and murderer online. There are whole websites devoted to hating me and my decision. But it was a good decision, and I am glad I made it. I would make it again. It was the right choice, the ethical choice. Before he bit that child, I could tell myself I didn’t think it would ever happen. Next time, I would never be able to look a child or his mother or father in the eye and say that again. In my view, caring for dogs does not mean allowing them to harm people.
When Orson had been dead for several weeks, I was visited by a shaman who conducted a spirit talk with my troubled border collie. She described the place from which Orson had come, the place where he had returned: a green valley by a flowing stream, blue lights everywhere, Orson sitting in rings of fire.
His work was done, she said. He was ready to leave. There are lots of different ways to communicate with animals. There are people who can communicate with the spirits of dead animals. I am not one of them, but I know several, and I have no doubts about their powers. I have met animal communicators and animal shamans. I have talked with them, seen them do their work. There are many things in the world that I cannot fully understand or explain, but that does not mean they are not true or real.
The shaman told me that Orson had come to see me, that he had lain in his familiar position with his head on my right foot while I sat and wrote at the computer.
I had not told her that I had felt recurring pressure on my right foot in the weeks since Orson had been euthanized.
She also said that Orson had come to see Winston the rooster, his friend and companion. He had come to tell Winston that when he was ready, he would take him to the other side, to the world of the blue lights by the stream.
She did not know that Orson and Winston were friends, that they napped together in the yard, that Winston was the only thing that could calm the excitable dog and make him tranquil.
She did not know that when I buried Orson up on the top of the hill behind the farmhouse, Winston the rooster, then old and lame from a hawk attack, came hobbling up the steep hill to sit by his grave. Winston would indeed die a few months later, and I often think of these two unlikely pals, sitting by their stream, dipping their claws and paws in the water, planning their next chapter.
When the shaman left, I thought I would not hear from Orson again, but I have felt his presence many times. In the summer of 2013, while herding the sheep with my border collie Red, I was standing quietly, as I love to do when herding. Red was watching the sheep graze.
I felt the old pressure on my right foot. I recognized it right away. It was Orson visiting me, coming down from the place of blue lights, perhaps, or from the life of another human being whose journey he was inspiring or marking.
I felt his presence. I think Red felt it too. He looked away from the sheep—something he rarely does—and the ruff on his back went up. I held up my hand to tell him to stay and be still, and he did stay, but he kept looking at me, as if transfixed.
Once in a while—early in the morning, especially—when I am alone and writing in my study, and it is dark and peaceful, Red will growl softly and I will see the hair on his neck rise. I will feel the pressure on my right foot, and feel the air stir, and I think it is Orson, coming back to me, checking on me, passing through on his way to a place I will never see or know or fully understand.
One night, when I felt a presence in my office, I had a powerful and very clear image of Orson sitting amid four rings of fire. He was at the center. The four rings formed a box around him, and it seemed to me that they were guarding him; they were a sanctuary, the place from which he came and went out into the world, and then returned to rest and heal his wounds and replenish his spirit.
There, in those rings, Orson
was a different spirit, a different creature. He was calm, at ease, at peace. He was no longer trying desperately to fit himself into a life he could not manage or understand.
I was awake, sitting in a chair. This was not a dream. Orson was looking directly at me. He spoke to me, very clearly, through feelings that came to me in words and ideas that I could grasp.
I came to awaken you, he said, to light the spark that would help you find your destiny, your life, your love. This was what you were looking for, what you were seeking your whole life.
Lucky did not live long enough to help you; Julius and Stanley were not powerful enough. You were not ready. You needed a stronger spirit to confront you and awaken you.
This is my home, the home of my ancestors. This is where I belong. Each of the rings means something different—one is hope, one is love, one is destiny, the other is chance.
I know you were disappointed in me, but I did what I had to do. I did what I came to do. I left when I could do no more.
That is the ongoing story of Orson and me, the story of hope, love, destiny, and chance. It brought me to the place of miracles and limits, and to the roots of a new understanding.
4
Elvis
When I bought Bedlam Farm in 2003, I splurged on good fences with thick posts and charged wires. I wanted my new home to be secure for the animals I planned to bring there. I was soon subsumed by the intense rhythms and complexities of owning a farm—the management of hay, fences, water, gates, barns and barn doors, winter, flies, mice and rats, coyotes and foxes.
I had two large pastures, each about seven acres in size. The first, behind the farmhouse, held the donkeys and the sheep. The second was empty. I had this idea it might be fun to have a couple of cows back there. I had never owned cows, but I saw a lot of them upstate and I liked their genial calm and their ravenous appetites. People with farms learn small economies. If I had a cow, I wouldn’t need to brush-hog my outer pasture.
I discussed this idea with one or two farmer friends. This was the pre-Internet, pre–social media way of communicating. In the country, it’s still the best way for farmers to talk to one another; very few have Facebook pages or the time to post all day. They are almost exclusively allergic to computing. This is a culture that believes if you have something to say, you say it face-to-face. If you want or need something you wait until you run into somebody at Farm Supply or at the coffee counter of the convenience store. You tell somebody who tells somebody and eventually somebody else gets in touch; the phone will ring, somebody will pull over his or her truck and give you a name. I accept and embrace change, but when people stopped talking to one another, connection and community suffered.
I am grateful to live in a place where people still talk.
So, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Peter Hanks, a friend, photographer, and dairy farmer, pulled up to the farm in his pickup. He got out, hemmed and hawed, then retreated into the safe realm of weather chat, the farmer’s staple conversation opener.
Peter was uncharacteristically hesitant that day, even shy. He seemed almost to be embarrassed by what he had to say. Few farmers I’ve met are great talkers; they have a lot of emotion, but they don’t share or show a lot of it. Finally, he came to the point. He had this huge Swiss steer, Brownie. “There’s something different about Brownie,” Peter said, scratching his head. “The way he looks at me, follows me up and down the gate. He’s not like any other steer I’ve had,” he said.
I understood Peter’s discomfort. Farmers know the difference between animals and pets, and farmers who start getting soft about steers can end up feeding an animal the size of a pickup truck for a long and expensive time. Farmers love their cows, but they also know that animals are their livelihood. Profit margins on a farm are slim, things are uncertain and unpredictable, hard decisions often have to be made.
“It was time to put the steers on the truck for market,” Peter said. “For the first time in my life, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t put Brownie on the truck.”
He had heard that I might be looking for a cow. Here was a steer, close enough. He would find a cow for me to go with the steer. What about it?
I thought it was crazy, at first, and of course it was. But the idea of learning how to talk to animals and understand them was growing in me. Somebody was now offering me a three-thousand-pound Swiss steer, an animal I knew absolutely nothing about. I had aquired the farm to understand animals and write about them. This was a gift, I realized, a wonderful opportunity.
At the time, I didn’t know whether my experiments with visualization and other forms of communicating were going to become a more serious part of my life. How far might I go with the idea? Were my experiences flukes, or had I stumbled onto something that was real?
There were two ways to find out—amp up my own experiments and ask other people to try with their animals. Over the next few years, I was to do both.
I decided to rename my new steer Elvis. He just looked like an Elvis to me.
Just like Peter said, Elvis was an unusual steer. He seemed drawn to humans; he made eye contact and liked to follow people along a fence line. He projected a gentle curiosity and intelligence that neither Peter nor I had ever seen before in an animal like that. Elvis was enormous, but seemed genial. He moved slowly, seemed calm, even meditative. When I came up to the pasture gate, he would lumber over and look me right in the eye, as if he was waiting for me to speak. I could see how Peter got attached to him.
Since I didn’t want to have a steer who was all alone—herd animals never like to be alone—I took in a second steer, Harold, from a different farmer Peter knew, and a female beef cow, Luna, as well. Both animals needed homes. Elvis, Harold, and Luna all occupied the rear pasture.
Around noon every day, Elvis would come and stand at the gate and stare into my study, about fifteen yards across the road, his brown eyes wide and pleading. I’d look up from my work and swear that Elvis was staring right at me. I stared right back.
This unnerved me; it was not how bovines behaved. I decided Elvis must be hungry and went outside and brought him more hay. As the days passed, he showed up more regularly at the gate. “You’re training me, aren’t you?” I shouted to him as I tossed yet another square bale of hay over the fence.
I saw that the square bales I had been feeding my donkeys and sheep would not last long with Elvis around. I found a hay farmer who sold 1,200-pound round bales and he delivered a dozen. I had to buy a small tractor to move into the pasture the round bales of hay that Elvis, Harold, and Luna needed to eat. The three of them ate a whole giant bale—it stood three or four feet higher than me—each week.
Elvis was the largest animal I had ever been near. I began to wonder how I might control and communicate with this enormous creature. On a real farm he would have been kept in a gated stall where he could be fed and controlled. Here he was loose in a seven-acre pasture. I couldn’t imagine how I might treat a wound, have him examined, or stop him if he decided to run over me or someone else.
It is, I know now, a profound mistake to take in a steer as a pet, the worst kind of emotionalizing of animals. Steers are raised for meat and are not bred to live long. They are genetically programmed to breed and die a year or two later. Any longer and their legs begin to go, unable to support the animal’s enormous weight. When this happens, they can suffer terribly. I’ve written extensively on the dangers of emotionalizing animals and yet I projected all sorts of things onto Elvis—he was cute, he was sweet, he liked me. I think everyone who lives with animals does it. When does it become too much? When it takes us over, causes us to lose perspective, obscures our ability to understand the real needs of real animals.
Elvis buzzed through my seven-acre pasture in a matter of weeks, drooling, snorting, buzz-cutting the grass as if he were a giant sucking machine, which he was. Like most animals, he loved food, paid close attention to it. I decided to see if I could talk to him, listen to him, even train him. I had no way of mak
ing him do anything—coming to the barn, standing still for a medical exam or a shot or fly spray—that he didn’t feel like doing. This was dangerous. I had to be careful and thoughtful. Elvis could knock me down with a swing of his enormous head or a swish of his tail. If he ran over me, I would not be getting up soon, if at all.
If Elvis had thought to walk right through my five-wire fence, he could have. For that matter, he could have knocked the barn down, walked right through the wall. I had nightmares about him walking through the fence and into the road, where he might well be hit by one of the speeding pickups that tore down my hill most days. I wasn’t sure who would survive a crash like that, though I wouldn’t bet on the truck.
If Elvis got belligerent or excited, he could easily have harmed me or anyone working on the farm. He was so big it took him ten yards just to stop when he was walking downhill, and when he decided to lie down, the pasture shook. He was surrounded by vast clouds of nasty flies, which he did not seem to notice, and he had a penchant for drooling and plucking and eating hats right off my head.
I was about to undertake a whole new level of communicating with animals. And I was scared. I imagined myself standing in the pasture conjuring up images for Elvis to receive while he simply walked right over me and trampled me into the ground. Much smaller steers than Elvis do that all the time to farmers who are cocky or not paying attention. My ideas would either work or they wouldn’t, but I was determined to try. I sat down and wrote out a plan for talking to Elvis. I had never communicated with an animal the size of a small cottage; I decided to proceed slowly.
First, I got a huge basket of apples and put them inside the barn. I stood outside the pasture gate and held a few up. When Elvis saw them, he came trotting over, rattling the gate and shaking the earth like the giant chasing Jack down the beanstalk. I held an apple out in my hand but did not offer it to Elvis until he was still and calm.