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Summary
Summary
"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 Dogis a book to savor. Just as Orson was the author's lifetime dog, his story is a lifetime treasure--poignant, timeless, and powerful.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Katz concludes the canine love story he began in A Dog Year (2002). Border collie Devon was a misfit from the moment he arrived at the Katz household in New Jersey. He tried to herd garbage trucks, snowplows, buses, kids on skateboards. After months of attempting to discipline the high-strung pup, Katz took him to train with Carolyn, an animal behaviorist and sheepherder. She observed that to Devon, the world made no sense. She also noted the pup was terrified of his own name; thus, Devon became "Orson." Realizing that the dog would never adapt to suburban New Jersey, Katz pulled up stakes and relocated to a farm in upstate New York. There, Orson found a measure of tranquility alongside Rose, a disciplined border collie; Clementine, a sweet Lab puppy; and Winston, a rooster with "Patton-like authority." While Rose herded sheep, Orson made Katz his work. The dog sat quietly while his owner wrote, and the two took moonlit walks to observe Sirius, the dog star. On an all-terrain vehicle, they daily patrolled the farm--and, illegally, the surrounding town. While he wasn't perfect, he was Katz's once-in-a-lifetime dog. "Orson helped me, deep into my sixth decade, to stay open, to not shut down," he writes. But suddenly the dog began to nip visitors and, worse, bite them. As his violence escalated, the once-skeptical Katz embraced every available treatment: traditional veterinary medicine, New Age acupuncturists, even an animal shaman. Orson became more aggressive, and Katz faced a terrible decision: Is it morally right to keep a dog that poses a danger to others? A heartbreaking memoir of love, friendship and responsibility. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
