Jon Katz > Quotes

“I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff.”
― Jon Katz

“ It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.”
― Jon Katz

“The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another?”
― Jon Katz

“I am no theologian, and do not have the answers to these questions, and one of the reasons I enjoy the animals on the farm so much is that they don't think about their pain, or question it, they accept it and endure it, true stoics. I have never heard a donkey or cow whine (although I guess dogs do).
I told my friend this: pain, like joy, is a gift. It challenges us, tests, defines us, causes us to grow, empathize, and also, to appreciate its absence. If nothing else, it sharpens the experience of joy. The minute something happens to me that causes pain, I start wondering how I can respond to it, what I can learn from it, what it has taught me or shown me about myself. This doesn't make it hurt any less, but it puts it, for me, on a more manageable level. I don't know if there is a God, or if he causes me or anybody else to hurt, or if he could stop pain. I try to accept it and live beyond it. I think the animals have taught me that.
The Problem of Pain is that it exists, and is ubiquitous. The Challenge of Pain is how we respond to it.”
― Jon Katz

“We are human, and we suffer, and unlike the animals on the farm, we are self-aware, and we know that we suffer, and it doesn't hurt more or less if God caused it or could stop it, at least for me. I am definitely of the school that believes God has bigger stuff to worry about than me.”
― Jon Katz

“The relationship between a dog and a human is always complicated. The two know each other in a way nobody else quite understands, a connection shrouded in personal history, temperament, experience, instinct, and love.”
― Jon Katz, A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

“There's a vulnerability about Rose, even a sweetness in her eyes, but there's no mistaking her priorities. Smart, tough, determined, she is essential, but rarely the dog that people melt over or want to take home. Yet she's a great dog.”
― Jon Katz, Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm

“Dogs are born knowing exactly what they want to do: eat, scratch, roll in disgusting stuff, sniff and squabble with other dogs, roam, sleep, have sex. Little of this is what we want them to do, of course. We ask them to sit, stay, smell peasant, practice abstinence, and be accommodating.”
― Jon Katz, The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me

“I am not mad here, but clear and calm. I am not transformed, but allowed to be wholly myself.I am isolated, but have never felt more connected to people. I am not imprisoned, but free. I am not cut off from my family and my roots, but am brought back to them. I am not living alone with dogs, but permitting my dogs to lead me somewhere I need to go, and it has been a great trip. We have more distance to travel together, I'm sure, before we are through.”
― Jon Katz, The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me

“That, even with imperfect masters, the canine soul is pure, loyal, and dependable.”
― Jon Katz, The Story of Rose: A Man and his Dog

“Being able to use the word “geek” has helped me a lot to define myself, but not as a mold for me to fit myself into, as a template to help accentuate my differences.”
― Jon Katz, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho

“She lived upstairs in the farmhouse; guests and visitors occupied the B&B rooms downstairs. She kept crates tucked all over the house, in which herding dogs-border collies and shepherds-slept while waiting to work, exercise, or play.

These working dogs, I'd come to learn, led lives very different from my dogs'. Carolyn let them out several times a day to exercise and eliminate, but generally, they were out of crates only to train or herd sheep. While they were out, Carolyn tossed a cup of kibble into their crates for them to eat when they returned. I asked her once if she left the lights on for the dogs when she went out, and she looked at me curiously. "Why? They don't read...

Still, they were everywhere. If you bumped into a sofa it might growl or thump. Some of her crew were puppies; some were strange rescue dogs.”
― Jon Katz, A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life

“Our task, wrote Einstein, is to liberate ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.”
― Jon Katz, Saving Simon: How a Rescue Donkey Taught Me the Meaning of Compassion

“An old tradition holds that at the Last Judgment, the non-human creatures of the earth will be called by God to "give evidence" against each human being. The idea pops up in books and stories about the Creation, deemed a myth, but a persistent, imposing, even haunting one: We will be judged by the very creatures so dependent on us.
So I treat, and will continue to treat, my animals - the dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and cows - with that in mind.
They will give evidence. What would I want them to say?”
― Jon Katz, Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm

“Where does it begin this sense of being the Other?”
― Jon Katz, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho

“If you have a border collie, and do your job, you will learn patience. if you have Labs, you will learn to stretch the boundaries of hygiene. I'm told that the original Labs hailed not from Labrador but from Newfoundland, where they worked with tough and tired fisherman who let them hang around but didn't provide organic or vegan dog food. As a result, Labs became scavengers, with little fussiness about what they ate.”
― Jon Katz, Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

“Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what's wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the internet, alarms go off. I know I'm around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one's spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears.”
― Jon Katz, A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

“My soul mate on this journey has been Orson. He brought me here. He stand with me here. Dogs are emotive, affectionate, and stimulating far beyond the capacity of the brightest-colored fish. A life with dogs - since the are animals, not human - is always an encounter with nature, no matter where it occurs, one that quite frequently connects us to our pasts. They're simple creatures, but they provide sensory diversity, opportunities for discovery and imagination, both connection and solitude - they are certainly radioactive jewels of memory.”
― Jon Katz, A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life

“Speak for me. Help me to make the decisions that I cannot make. Do not ask me to tell you when it’s time for me to go, for that is beyond my simple province. I love you and trust you, and I have depended on you all of my life to make decisions for me. Now, when I need you the most, do not fail me. Whatever you decide, I know it will be your best decision, and I wish you nothing but peace with it.”
― Jon Katz, Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die

“The beauty of herding sheep with dogs, isn't displaying or winning awards. I'd never entered Rose in any competition. It's the sense of wordless partnership, the moment where the dog's instincts and the herder's experience fuse into that moment, if she wasn't already there. She wasn't merely resting by the tree; she was sitting with her sheep, watching over them, staying among them, comfortable enough with herself and with them to be still.”
― Jon Katz, Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

“I am lucky in marriage and in dogs.”
― Jon Katz, A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me

“The true heart of Carolyn's farm was her kitchen, where sausages and pungent dog treats lay scattered over they counters, along with collars, magazines and books, trial application forums, checks from her students (Carolyn, not big on details, often left them lying around for months), leashes, and dog toys.

Pots of coffee were always brewing, and dog people could be found sitting around her big wooden table at all hours. Devon and I were always welcome there, and he grew to love going around the table from person to person, collecting pats and treats. Troubled dogs were familiar at the table, and appreciated. If we couldn't bring our dogs many places, we could always bring them here.”
― Jon Katz, A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life

“Rose is undistractable, indefatigable, a problem solver.
Work is her essence, her animating spirit, and the core of her impact on me. Her dedication to it helps make my life possible, connects the two of us in this powerful way.”
― Jon Katz, Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm

“It's interesting that my neighbor Irv, who saw dogs so differently, knew all the kids and people on the block and could recite the family history of each house until about a decade ago. Now few of our neighbors can name more than a handful of people who live on the street. They have little to do with local government, and vote sporadically, at best. In the evenings and on weekends, they go their own ways. Their kids are repeatedly warned about talking to people they don't know.”
― Jon Katz

“they said, with some adoption papers if we decided to keep him. I think Simon decided”
― Jon Katz, Saving Simon: How a Rescue Donkey Taught Me the Meaning of Compassion

“She seemed to have a sort of map of the farm inside her head, a picture of how things out to be. Whenever something was wrong or out of place – an animal sick, a fence down, an unwelcome intruder – she knew it instantly, and called attention to it, sniffing, barking, circling. She constantly updated the map, it seemed to Sam.
Occasionally her map failed her – but that was rare. Sam saw to it that Rose was always with him, that she was appraised of everything that came and went – every animal, every machine – so she could keep her mental inventory.”
― Jon Katz, Rose in a Storm

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― Jon Katz, The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love, and Family

“Had Sam been in the farmhouse and looked out, he would have been amazed to see this solitary dog, covered in a coating of white, staring up the hill, giving eye to the wind, the snow, the coyotes, to life and the world, to her choices and her duty. He would have marveled at her responsibility, her loyalty, and her bravery. Rose had never run, never backed down, never failed to get it done. He had said that about her so many times – he bragged about her like she was his child, although never in her presence. It would have been patronizing, even insulting, to praise Rose so much to her face. Work was her reward.
But there was no one to see this dog on the hill, and no human would ever know what was about to happen there.”
― Jon Katz, Rose in a Storm

“I cherish the predictability of these creatures, their sociability, their contented acceptance of life. I wish I possessed even one of those traits. I’m working on it.”
― Jon Katz, Izzy & Lenore: Two Dogs, an Unexpected Journey, and Me

“Contrary to what many may believe about these horses and the environment that they live in, the horses are in good health and are living in an appropriate stable with excellent care. These horses are being treated with pride and compassion, often by their individual owners/drivers." He found the horses were housed in comfortable, clean, spacious box stalls that allowed them to lie down in comfortable bedding. They are provided, he said, with quality food and water throughout the day. After his first visit, Dr. Jordan returned a second time unannounced and examined the stables again. He also went to Central Park to look at the horses there. "The horses at Central Park were all in good weight, well shod, and prepared for their work." None appeared to be overworked." It was clear, Dr. Jordan said, that the horses are "living happy lives with owners who truly care for their well-being.”
― Jon Katz, Who Speaks for the Carriage Horses: The Future of Animals in Our World