HotmailJon Katz writes of dogs, death and healing
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At 61, he has reinvented his life. He has written 17 books, the last seven dealing with dogs and life on the farm he shares with goats, sheep, donkeys, dogs and other animals. His wife, Paula Span, visits as often as she can get away from her own busy life as a New York City journalist who teaches at Columbia University.
“This last year was just tough,” Katz says. “I had a crash. It was a tough winter. I had just been diagnosed with diabetes. I was dealing with some childhood issues that I had put off and never dealt with.”
He includes discussion of his downward spiral into depression and how he managed to overcome it in his new book. Besides help from a clinical social worker and a supportive network of friends, Katz took up photography. He displays his photos, as well as blogs chronicling his hospice work and life on the farm, on his Web site: http://www.bedlamfarm.com.
The wheels of Katz's Blazer crunch along the stony driveway of an ancient farmhouse beneath towering black locusts and maples, surrounded by a green bowl of flowery hillsides. Izzy trots to the door as Warren Cardwell, an 81-year-old widower, greets his visitors.
Katz and Izzy grew close to Cardwell and his wife of 60 years, Helen, while making hospice visits to the dying woman. Now, Katz is Cardwell's bereavement counselor as well as a dear friend.
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With his own little dog yapping in another room, Cardwell talks about the special bond he has with Izzy.
“You can relate to Izzy without talking to him. I think he knows what's on your mind,” Cardwell says. “He's a real source of calm. He connected with Helen. He'd jump on the bed with her. Helen just lit up when she'd see him, and I guess I do, too. He brought sunshine.”
Amy Tucci, president of Hospice Foundation of America, said pet therapy can bring great comfort to patients and families. “It's just amazing to watch people who have been unconnected or not wanting to socialize, feeling totally comfortable petting a dog and sharing their emotions that way,”Tucci said.
At first, Katz was uncertain how a dog would cope with the paraphernalia of illness, such as wheelchairs, walkers, oxygen tanks and tubes. But Izzy took to the job at once, approaching patients calmly, gently sliding his head under a frail hand, lying still on a bed while someone drifted to sleep.
“Izzy was just a natural, he was born for this work,” Katz says. “He leads the way. He's like a social worker.”
Izzy's ability to connect with people in difficult circumstances is all the more surprising given his background. At a friend's urging, a dubious Katz took Izzy home from an abandoned farm where the untrained, unsocialized dog had been left to run wild inside a fence, cut off from human interaction. It took many months of work to calm the dog and teach him basic manners.
Back home on the sloping, leaf-dappled lawn of his Civil War-era farmhouse, dogs milling around his legs and goats bleating from the pen out back, Katz muses on how hospice work has brought a new dimension to his rural life.
“I would encourage anyone who wants to have a really intimate, powerful experience with humans to look into helping hospice people on the edge of life leave the world in comfort and dignity,” Katz says.
“It's been a great experience for me creatively as a writer, as a photographer, and probably more importantly, as a human being.”
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