A Good Dog
The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life
by Jon Katz
978-1-4000-6189-X
Villard Books, 2006
“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.