A Small Dog

Jon Katz’s The New Work of Dogs

Posted on 15. Nov, 2008 by Jeff K. in The Small Dog-Human Bond

I am a huge fan of author Jon Katz. If you have not read any of his books, I highly recommend that you do. In each of his works about dogs, Katz looks at dog behavior from a very unconventional viewpoint. His focus is not on why dogs do what they do, nor is it on how people influence or train their dogs. He tells the story of how dogs influence human behavior, and how that influence can be profoundly life-changing for some people. Most of his work springs from personal dramas. He speaks of himself humbly, as a flawed, middle-aged man trying to become a better person by taking positive cues from his dogs.;

In The New Work of Dogs, (Villard Books, 2003,) his third book about the human-canine relationship, Katz looks at a slightly darker side of the issue.  He proposes that the work of dogs has changed significantly in the past few decades, and not necessarily for the better where dogs are concerned. Katz writes:

“Years ago, people went to the pound to find a dog, or got a puppy from a friend’s or neighbor’s litter. Those who bought purebreds or boutique breeds were a privileged minority, their well-born dogs an affectation.

“Dog training was little known and little needed, since most dogs merely wandered their neighborhoods and were seldom walked on leashes. Mailmen and children got bitten from time to time, but it hardly ever made the news. Fighting breeds were almost unheard-of. People surely loved their dogs, but by contemporary standards, few spent much time or money on them. Dogs were in the background, not at the center, of family life. They slept in the basement or—unthinkable today—in a backyard doghouse, chased after cars and other dogs, ate table scraps.

“They came and went. Some got hit by cars, others ran off or were put down when they got sick or old. When that happened, people went to the pound for another dog. Beyond the initial round of puppy shots, people rarely invested much in veterinary care.

“Often much loved and fondly remembered, dogs were not treated as family members, according to behaviorists who have studied human-animal bonds. Nor did they have playdates . . . The notion that they were a part of one’s deepest emotional experiences would have been a joke. . .

“Dogs and people formed bonds thousands of years ago, primarily because the wolflike early dogs offered protection from other predators, Pat Sable wrote in the National Association of Social Workers Journal in 1996. Those bonds have evolved so that dogs and people now have intimate emotional connections, Sable observes. . . Dogs are doing more psychological work in the broader population than they’ve been credited with, helping people through alienation, bereavement, anxiety and depression.”

Katz goes on to say “[Today] in a society where people often live away from their extended families, watch more and more TV, hook up to cable and the Net, and feel increasingly isolated, where adjustments to new technologies and disruptions of workplaces and relationships characterize modern life—dogs have a lot of new work to do. . .

“But it is important to grasp the truth of our relationship with dogs, for their sakes and ours. We need to understand more about what we are asking them to do and why. Failing to do that can put dogs, and our relationships with them at risk. If we ask too much of them, they will suffer. We will become disenchanted with them, and in some cases, fail to get the kind of help we really need.”

Katz concludes his chapter with this: “Are we asking more of them than any animal can give? Projecting more thoughts and feelings than they can possibly have, and sometimes turning on them when they can’t deliver? Are we sometimes using dogs to hide from problems? Are we treating dogs as we wish or as they need to be treated? More simply, are we allowing our dogs to be dogs?”

Having spent many hours as a fly on the wall in the homes of dog owners in his community of Montclair, New York, Jon Katz uses the rest of the book to relate stories of people and their dogs. He takes us inside the lives of people who have formed bonds with dogs that range from beautiful and tender to bizarre or pitiful. Rather than simply telling us, Katz lets us see firsthand how the new work of dogs sometimes helps and sometimes hurts both people and their pets. Filled with more highs than lows, his book is an emotional ride any dog lover will enjoy and likely learn from.

In future articles, I will have more on the opinions and observations of Jon Katz, and how his ideas relate to what we see every day at Kelsey’s Dog House.

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