“People who love dogs often talk about a ‘lifetime’ dog. I’d heard the phrase a dozen times before I came to recognize its significance. Lifetime dogs are dogs we love in especially powerful, sometimes inexplicable ways.”–Jon Katz In this gripping and deeply touching book, bestselling author Jon Katz tells the story of his lifetime dog, Orson: a beautiful border collie–intense, smart, crazy, and unforgettable. From the moment Katz and Orson meet, when the dog springs from his traveling crate at Newark airport and panics the baggage claim area, their relationship is deep, stormy, and loving. At two years old, Katz’s new companion is a great herder of school buses, a scholar of refrigerators, but a dud at herding sheep. Everything Katz attempts– obedience training, herding instruction, a new name, acupuncture, herb and alternative therapies–helps a little but not enough, and not for long. “Like all border collies and many dogs,” Katz writes, “he needed work. I didn’t realize for some time I was the work Orson would find.” While Katz is trying to help his dog, Orson is helping him, shepherding him toward a new life on a two-hundred-year-old hillside farm in upstate New York. There, aided by good neighbors and a tolerant wife, hip-deep in sheep, chickens, donkeys, and more dogs, the man and his canine companion explore meadows, woods, and even stars, wade through snow, bask by a roaring wood stove, and struggle to keep faith with each other. There, with deep love, each embraces his unfolding destiny. A Good Dog is a book to savor. Just as Orson was the author’s lifetime dog, his story is a lifetime treasure–poignant, timeless, and powerful. Katz's previous books have detailed his life with dogs ( A Dog Year, 2002, and The Dogs of Bedlam Farm , 2004), the place of dogs in modern society ( The New Work of Dogs , 2003), and what dogs have taught him ( Katz on Dogs, 2005). When he first laid eyes on highly intelligent but anxious Orson the border collie, he watched as the dog streaked through the Newark airport upon being released from his shipping crate. Under Orson's influence, the author moved from suburban New Jersey to a farm in New York and began a new life of dog training, sheepherding, and writing. Orson was Katz's "lifetime dog," the one he felt a powerful, life-changing connection with--but Orson was a difficult dog. In a lyrical series of vignettes, the author writes of his working border collie, Rose (the personality opposite of Orson); the rooster, Winston; sheep; donkeys; and the impossible Orson, whom Katz thought was destined to work sheep but whose work became the author. This is a lovely memoir. Nancy Bent Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Carolyn Wilki told the five of us to spread out into a circle in her pasture, with our dogs. We were an odd group, a motley mix of dog lovers and our anxious border collies and shepherds arrayed near an aging stone farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania in the blazing summer sun. The other four people did as instructed, along with their dogs. I didn’t. Devon and I were in our third month of working with Carolyn, a respected and fiercely opinionated sheepherder and dog behaviorist. She’d suggested that we join this herding class in addition to our weekly lessons. So we had, with trepidation. I’m not generally a joiner; I don’t have a good history with groups. And Devon was not a dog who played well with others, either. Once we were mostly in formation, Carolyn brought out her antique metal box filled with small figures of dogs, sheep, and fences. I groaned. Carolyn was fond of her toy farm creatures, which she’d shown me on our first visit, and loved to demonstrate the ballet that constituted sheepherding–human, dog, and sheep all moving in relation to one another. She would haul her box out and carefully place the components in their appropriate positions on a picnic table or on the grass. Then she’d sketch out herding and training moves like an NFL coach diagramming complex patterns for offense. The papers she handed her students when class ended were filled with X’s and O’s, squibbles and arrows. The X’s were dogs, the O’s were people. If the X’s went here, she’d explain, then the O’s would go there. The sheep were usually the squibbles. Devon and I were rarely where we were supposed to be. He herded sheep the way he herded school buses–forcefully, impulsively, explosively. At least the sheep could run. This role-playing was not the sort of thing either of us was especially good at. I was allergic to being lectured to, had hated just about every class and teacher I’d ever had, and the favor had been returned. Poor Mr. Hauser actually wept in front of my mother when I had to take his math class for the third time. Neither of us could bear the idea of going another round. Authority issues continued to plague me through my adult life. One reason that being a writer suited me was that most of the time the only jerk I h
