{"product_id":"the-dogs-of-bedlam-farm-isbn-9780812972504","title":"The Dogs of Bedlam Farm","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Dogs are blameless, devoid of calculation, neither blessed nor cursed with human motives. They can’t really be held responsible for what they do. But we can.”\u003cbr\u003e–from \u003ci\u003eThe Dogs of Bedlam Farm\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Jon Katz adopted a border collie named Orson, his whole world changed. Gone were the two yellow Labs he wrote about in \u003ci\u003eA Dog Year,\u003c\/i\u003e as was the mountaintop cabin they loved. Katz moved into an old farmhouse on forty-two acres of pasture and woods with a menagerie: a ram named Nesbitt, fifteen ewes, a lonely donkey named Carol, a baby donkey named Fanny, and three border collies. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTraining Orson was a demanding project. But a perceptive dog trainer and friend told Katz: “If you want to have a better dog, you will just have to be a better goddamned human.” It was a lesson Katz took to heart. He now sees his dogs as a reflection of his willingness to improve, as well as a critical reminder of his shortcomings. Katz shows us that dogs are often what we make them: They may have their own traits and personalities, but in the end, they are mirrors of our own lives–living, breathing testaments to our strengths and frustrations, our families and our pasts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Dogs of Bedlam Farm\u003c\/i\u003e recounts a harrowing winter Katz spent on a remote, windswept hillside in upstate New York with a few life-saving friends, ugly ghosts from the past, and more livestock than any novice should attempt to manage. Heartwarming, and full of drama, insight, and hard-won wisdom, it is the story of his several dogs forced Katz to confront his sense of humanity, and how he learned the places a dog could lead him and the ways a doge could change him.\u003cb\u003eJON KATZ\u003c\/b\u003e has written thirteen books-–six novels and seven works of nonfiction, including \u003ci\u003eA Dog Year\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe New Work of Dogs.\u003c\/i\u003e A two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, he has written for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times,\u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal, Rolling Stone,\u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eAKC Gazette.\u003c\/i\u003e A member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, he writes a column about dogs for the online magazine \u003ci\u003eSlate\u003c\/i\u003e and is co-host of “Dog Talk,” a monthly show on Northeast Public Radio. Katz lives on Bedlam Farm in upstate New York and in northern New Jersey, with his wife Paula Span, a \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e contributing writer and teacher at Columbia University, and their dogs. He can be e-mailed at jonkatz3@comcast.net or at jdkat3@aol.com.Chapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCITY OF GOD\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBEDLAM: a place, scene, or  state of uproar and confusion\u003cbr\u003e -Columbia Encyclopedia\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFar in the distance, as the morning mists began to clear, I could see a  livestock trailer heading west on Route 30 from Salem toward the hamlet  of West Hebron. From this hill behind my new house, I could spot  visitors approaching from miles away.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were plenty of farms around this quadrant of upstate New York,  lots of places livestock haulers might be going, but my guess was that  this was Wilbur Price of Bethel, Pennsylvania, delivering a ram named  Nesbitt and the ladies, fifteen “dog-broke” ewes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhich meant it was time to walk down the hill. Change was just around  the corner, big change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor three border collies, there could be no more meaningful event than  the arrival of sheep in their backyard. For me, the change was more  complex, but a big transition nonetheless, another midlife crapshoot. I  was stepping out of one existence and into another, a shift inexorably  linked to these three dogs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe all clambered down the hill as the trailer descended into town. In a  few minutes, this farm, known around the county as the old Keyes  place—somehow I doubted it would ever be known as the old Katz  place—with its listing and peeling dairy barn, an even more askew pig  barn, an overgrown chicken pen, and several other outbuildings, would  be home once again to livestock. Everyone in the tiny village could  look up the hill and see animals grazing, as they had for generations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was no farmer, and this place wouldn’t really qualify as a working  farm. I am a dog lover and writer, and this would be, in part, a  dog-centric adventure with my border collies. Even before the animals  arrived, in the few weeks since I’d moved in and begun preparations, I  could hardly believe the amount of work involved just in overseeing  forty-two acres and a Civil War–era farmhouse. I could only imagine how  difficult and relentless real farmwork was, particularly in brutal  winter. My work would be fractional in comparison, and I wouldn’t rely  on the farm to provide my family’s livelihood—an enormous difference.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWilbur, a garrulous man in a giant baseball cap and overalls, was  indeed waiting at the gravel driveway with his noisy cargo. We shook  hands and chatted about the weather and the drive and his dicey  encounters with fog en route. Wilbur, I realized, drove sheep and cows  around all day and didn’t want to pass up the chance for a more  satisfying conversation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI, on the other hand, was eager to populate my farm and get it rolling.  After considerable effort and dismaying expense, I had fences up, hay  and straw in the barn, and corn and feed stashed in critter-proof  containers all over. I was as ready as somebody like me was ever going  to be. But I’d learned that country talk can’t be rushed. It had to  have been a long and lonely ride up from Raspberry Ridge, my friend  Carolyn’s sheep farm and dog-training center. These ewes were loaners  from her much larger flock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe knew these sheep. My elder dogs and I, frequent visitors and herding  students at Raspberry Ridge, had taken them to graze in the pasture  countless times in rain and sunshine, in deep night and bright day,  heat and cold. We’d moved them around during herding trials, chased  them during our lessons, retrieved them from the woods when they  wandered, midwifed a few of their lambs. We also knew—and were  appropriately wary of—Nesbitt, who’d sent me flying more than once.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI could hear them all shifting and bleating in the trailer, probably  hungry and thirsty. I heard an asthmatic-sounding bray, too, which  meant that at the last minute Carolyn had decided to send the donkey  along with the rest of the crew. The donkey lived alone in a pasture,  and Carolyn thought she might have a better quality of life at my new  encampment. Carol, the donkey, was a sweetheart, whose affections I’d  won with gifts of apples; I wondered if she’d recognize me in this  strange new environment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWilbur finally sensed that it was time to get moving. He slowly backed  the truck a few feet inside the barnyard gate and slipped the latches  that opened his trailer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCarol the Lonely Donkey hee-hawed again, looked around, snarfed down  the donkey cookie I was holding out for her, and trotted down the ramp.  She did seem to remember me, and in any case appreciated the cookie.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBehind her, fifteen sheep and Nesbitt came charging past me, headed for  the lush grass that covered the hill, and immediately started crunching  away. Unlike dogs, sheep are not complex in their attachments. Grass is  good. Grass is always good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI shook Wilbur’s hand and wrote out a check on the cab of his truck.  Bedlam Farm was in business.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy dogs, corralled in their own spacious fenced enclosure a few yards  away, sat frozen; they seemed shocked, wide-eyed, ears and tails at the  alert. One rarely sees a more focused look on any creature than I saw  on the faces of Orson, Homer, and Rose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe autumn wind was sharp, parting the mists on the hill. I looked up  to see a small flock of sheep and a donkey grazing near an old apple  tree. I could hardly believe it myself; they looked as if they had  grown out of the ground and had been there forever. Wilbur declined  coffee and other amenities, saying he wanted to be home for dinner, and  after much rattling, banging, and slamming, the truck rumbled off down  the dirt road into town, back to the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was one thing to drive out and work with Carolyn’s sheep once or  twice a week from suburban New Jersey, where much of the time my dogs  and I lived an ordinary-looking life with my wife. It was quite another  to be responsible for sheep living just outside my kitchen window.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey would need shots and worming and medical certificates from a vet.  They would need to be shorn, to have their hooves trimmed. They’d need  corn to build up calories for the winter, vitamin supplements when the  ewes got pregnant, straw to lie on, and hay to eat once the grass  withered in the first hard frost. They needed a continuous supply of  fresh water, even in sub-zero weather.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a few months, their newborn lambs would need to be located  instantly, dried, and placed under heating lamps, separate from the  rest of the flock. Lambs often required special supplements, and they’d  need to be tagged and registered and have their tails docked. And  everyone would need shelter from the vicious winter storms that would  be arriving in just a few weeks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll of these things had to be provided when the ice was packed a foot  deep on the ground amid waist-high mounds of snow. And I had to—wanted  to—take care of almost all those things myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen we bought this place, my wife, Paula, had set down three ironclad  conditions: no firearms; no farm or other heavy machinery; and the  gargantuan 1982 Chevy Silverado pickup I’d bought for hauling hay and  other farm chores was not to be driven more than five miles in any  direction. She was convinced that it would break down at inconvenient  times; I had to be able to walk home.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnybody who knew me understood the wisdom of these conditions. So while  I would need help with barn repairs, drainage ditches, anything  involving heavy machinery, the work was otherwise mine to do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo as Wilbur drove out of sight and I waved goodbye, I was elated but  also unnerved. There was no going back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur day had begun much earlier, around five a.m., with our new morning  routine. Orson, Homer, and the puppy, Rose, had labored up the steep  hill behind the house with me, the wind whipping around us, tearing  leaves off the trees at the top of the ridge. Even in the forbidding  predawn, I could scarcely believe I owned such a beautiful tract of  countryside. I could hear the occasional yip-yip of coyotes—“coy dogs,”  the locals call them—and wondered how soon they would be circling my  soon-to-\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003earrive sheep.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo be honest, I was the only one laboring up the hill, heading for two  Adirondack chairs placed at the crest. The dogs were racing and gliding  effortlessly, zipping around in enthusiastic circles the way border  collies go everywhere—back and forth, round and round, always somehow  keeping me in the center. I’d become used to walking in this odd way,  aware vaguely that I was being herded. The two adults, Orson and Homer,  had plenty of energy, but Rose positively zoomed, galloping from one  corner of the pasture to the other in the time it took me to go a few  steps.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery dog has a story, but Orson’s is better known than some. A breeder  in Texas had retrieved him from someone she deemed an unsuitable owner,  then sent him to me after reading one of my books, in which I talked  about my late, beloved yellow Labs. Orson, then named Devon, was a dog  in trouble. He was anxious, confused, apt to jump onto passing  minivans, herd school buses, raid the refrigerator and jump through  windows; we brawled until I found a great trainer—Carolyn—who helped  turn our lives around.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe was followed by Homer, as sweet and submissive as Orson was  difficult, but a dog who presented challenges of his own. Then a few  months ago, our pack had been joined by Rose, the nuclear-powered puppy  with strong herding lines who made the other two seem like stone  statues. People ask me why I got a third border collie, and the truth  is I hardly know. I still can’t quite explain why I got the first one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Guys, this will be a great day for you,” I announced. “Soon there will  be fifteen ewes in this field, along with a grumpy ram named Nesbitt  and maybe a donkey. You’ve got to watch out for Nesbitt. He’ll nail  me.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt had only been a couple of months since I had put my cherished  mountaintop retreat—a cabin where I’d written three books and found  more peace and beauty than I’d ever known—up for sale. I wanted to buy  an old farmhouse with a porch, some land, maybe a barn. Through a  series of flukes, I’d gotten more than I’d bargained for, more acreage,  a lovelier house, more barns in more advanced stages of decay, along  with coyotes, hawks and songbirds, yellow jackets and fleas, feral  cats, rats and mice (despite the feral cats), raccoons, chipmunks,  foxes, loads of deer, and unconfirmed rumors of two moose and a  mountain lion. I also had a sweeping view of a lush valley checkered  with pastures, cornfields, and barns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe classic white Greek revival farmhouse had seen a lot of history. It  sat on a hillside above a tiny hamlet of thirty or forty houses, two  lovely old churches, and a general store—Bedlam’s Corner. The name  mesmerized me from the moment I first drove by.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMy earlier cabin, a half hour south of Hebron, was a getaway, a private  corner for a writer’s internal life. I worked there, read, hiked with  the dogs. Apart from my wife and daughter and two or three friends,  hardly anyone else had ever seen it. That was part of the problem; it  was my place and only my place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs much as I’d loved it, as important as it had become, the cabin had  also defeated me in a way. It was so small that there was barely enough  space for the dogs and me; it felt crowded when my wife visited, let  alone my daughter Emma. I had come to want not a retreat for me, but a  rural home for us, with places for Paula to work and Emma to stay, with  space for friends—a place for liveliness more than solitary  contemplation. I felt ready for a fuller existence, though I had no  inkling just how full it was about to get.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was conscious, as I try always to be, of entering another phase, of  marking the transition and pondering how I was going to deal with it.  I’d just turned fifty-six. How many more houses would I be buying? How  many more dogs could I ever own? How much more time did Paula and I  have to be together in a place like this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI couldn’t really afford the farm any more than I could the cabin that  preceded it, but I couldn’t really afford to wait, either. For several  years, especially since the terrorist attacks on New York City, I’d  seen people assessing their lives, making changes, seeking property  upstate. In another five years I doubted I’d be able to buy acreage. My  little cabin, forlorn and ungainly at the time, had been on the market  for two years when I bought it. It sold in less than a week, once I put  it on the market.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDriving me around the town of Hebron as I looked for the replacement I  had in mind, the real estate agent had looked up at the hillside as we  passed and pointed at the white farmhouse. “There’s the house you  want,” she said ruefully. “But it isn’t for sale.” Three weeks later,  it suddenly was. Sometimes houses, like dogs, find you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat better place to test my notions about dogs and humans than here,  with border collies and a bunch of sheep? Could they become happier  dogs and more useful partners? Could I learn to be a better human? The  four of us and our little band of animals, tucked away on a hillside  through a glorious fall, the bitter upstate winter, and a cold, muddy  spring filled with lambing, could probably find out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo months later, I was here, unpacking boxes and dealing with hay  supplies, cranky barn doors, monosyllabic Vermont fence builders, and  more. It seemed I had compressed years of activities into weeks and  days—selling a beloved home, buying a more complex one, moving out and  in, arranging the endless details that would make it possible for me  and my assorted livestock to live here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a few hours, I told the dogs, as we puffed uphill in the dark, there  would be sheep right out the back door. The announcement wasn’t as  loopy as it seemed: every mention of the word “sheep” got three heads  swiveling. Even little Rose, who’d visited Raspberry Ridge just a few  times, was already hooked and showing quite a bit of herding style.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI bought the place for my family and me, but my wife pointed out what I  privately conceded—I bought it for the dogs, as well. Owning land you  could barely see the end of was wonderful, but owning property that  could give dogs a chance to do and perfect what they most loved, what  their breed had done for hundreds of years, that was still another  dimension.Author of The New Work of Dogs and Katz on Dogs; National bestseller; [quote] --The Boston Globe","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299818819813,"sku":"NP9780812972504","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812972504.jpg?v=1767739052","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-dogs-of-bedlam-farm-isbn-9780812972504","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}