A Touching and Amusing Man and Dog Tale

A DOG YEAR

Twelve Months, Four

Dogs, and Me

By Jon Katz

Villard

202 pages, $21.95

Border collies are strange animals. Obsessive, territorial, curious and possessed with an unsettling intelligence, these dogs are not typical family pets. Jon Katz learned that fact the hard way, and in “A Dog Year” he chronicles his tumultuous relationship with Devon, the 2-year-old border collie who changed his life in ways he never expected.

What distinguishes Katz’s witty canine account from most others is his abstention from sentimentality--no baby-talk with his pets, no treating them as if they were adorable children. Since boyhood, Katz has been an ardent dog lover--perhaps to an extent that troubles his wife, to whom he dedicates the book: “For Paula, who loves dogs, but not this much.” Yet he possesses what can only be described as profound admiration for them and remarkable empathy. “Dogs live on a scale that I can comprehend; their lives are an outcome I can affect,” he writes. “They make me happy, satisfy me deeply, anchor me in an elemental way.”

Katz also admits that though it’s sometimes challenging for him to trust other people, he does trust his dogs. “They would do anything for me, and I for them.” Of course there are four dogs mentioned in the book’s title, but the fourth (unbelievably, an additional border collie, named Homer) comes much later.

The narrative focus is upon the author’s relationship with the intense, high-strung Devon, and with Julius and Stanley, the two angelic yellow Labrador retrievers (“attentive, smart, calm, and loving”) who already live with the Katz family. Katz adopts Devon into his suburban New Jersey home after getting a call from a Texas breeder who read his previous book, “Running to the Mountain,” and who thinks that Katz is the perfect companion for this “uncommonly bright, willful, and emotionally beat up” dog.

Although he knows that border collies are moody, need space to roam, despise inactivity and often try to herd other animals in the absence of sheep, Katz finally gives in. He confesses a love for challenges and has always been fascinated by border collies. “I felt anxious, dubious, excited, strongly pulled toward something that made no sense,” Katz writes.

Not long after Devon arrives, his owner gives him the apt nickname “Helldog.” Stunning in appearance yet utterly disobedient, Devon displays bad behavior astonishing for its boldness. He repeatedly escapes from his fenced backyard, even attempting one day to herd a school bus. He jumps on top of a moving van. When left in the house alone, he opens cabinets, makes neat piles of shoes and moves loaves of bread (unwrapped) to an upstairs bedroom. Most disturbing of all, Devon is a dog who knows how to cover his tracks: After he squeezes through a narrow opening in the backyard fence, thanks to a loose slat, he turns around and slides the slat back into position. Eventually, he learns to open the porch screen door with his left paw. And whenever Katz tries to discipline him, Devon offers nothing but a calm, defiant glare in return.

Although this family drama might seem uncompelling to the outsider (or even, perhaps, to Katz’s stoic, good-natured wife), “A Dog Year” is more than a man-versus-dog story. That might not be so if Devon, “[e]qual parts manic and panic,” were not portrayed as such a fascinating creature. While Katz presents himself as a genial, average suburban middle-aged guy, he describes Devon as insecure and endlessly complex. “He was a split personality,” Katz writes, “fiercely proud and willful, but at the same time lonely and defeated, with a sense of anxious despair about him. His eyes were sometimes deep and mournful wells.” Through this troubled soul, Katz, a happily married man and devoted father, begins to understand himself better. And he learns to practice patience in a way he has never experienced.

The noble, aging Julius and Stanley are equally rich characters, tolerant of the new addition to the family, if more than a little perplexed. But it’s the “contest of wills and wile” between Katz and Devon that proves most engaging, as well as comical. Katz’s determination to integrate the emotionally battered dog into his otherwise happy family is astonishing, and when he finally gains Devon’s trust and respect, his exultation is palpable.

By the end of the book, you get the sense that the battle is not quite over but that the two have formed a deep bond. “Had Devon been a person,” he writes, “and our relationship had turned that confrontational, we would have gone into therapy together. There was no question that I had come to love him deeply.” He concludes that his dog “had known all along what I wanted from him, he just wasn’t convinced he ought to do it.”

The adventures described in “A Dog Year” are the stuff of great fiction: heroic rescues (of both the author and his dogs); spiritual retreats to the upstate New York cabin made famous in “Running to the Mountain”; and terrible experiences with illness and loss. (Anyone who has lived through a dog’s death knows that it’s like losing a member of the family.) Along the way, Katz offers helpful advice on training and reveals what he has learned about himself through his dogs. Part cautionary tale, part love story, “A Dog Year” reminds us that adopting a pet is a massive responsibility but one that rewards the owner with a much richer, more meaningful life.