The truth about Katz and dogs is captured in 'Bedlam Farm'

The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure With Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me
By Jon Katz, Villard, 256 pp., $22.95

The latest offering by author and former journalist Jon Katz will be welcomed by all those who believe in the power of animals -- dogs, in particular -- to enhance a human life.

Having written 13 books, Katz has now turned definitively to the subject of the canine-human bond. His last two outings, both well received, were ''A Dog Year" and ''The New Work of Dogs."

But you needn't have read those to appreciate this memoir of a man who, in his mid-50s, ditches the comfortable, well-worn groove of routine to buy a 42-acre sheep farm in upstate New York -- complete with sheep -- so he can simultaneously train his three border collies, detox from the big city, and buff up his spiritual side.

Indeed, you swiftly realize that this is a man who is already well along on that journey; by page 13, he is on top of a mountain at dawn, reading aloud to his sheepdogs from Saint Augustine's ''City of God."

So, ostensibly a book about dogs and dog nature, this somewhere along the line became a book about dogs as spiritual conduit, channel to elsewhere, to being what Katz calls ''a better human."

Now, wait -- I know what you're thinking: In the centuries elapsed between Adam's naming of the animals and the modern polemics over animal rights, our relationship with other species has become something of a sticky wicket. Writing about animals can be a quagmire from which few emerge without mud on their boots. Happily for us, Katz refuses to anthropomorphize in, say, the manner of animal writer Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, or hyperanalyze the moral capacity of animals, like the late (great) philosopher and animal trainer Vicki Hearne.

''I don't see dogs as psychic or telepathic," he writes. ''Nor do I believe that we will meet them in the afterlife, or that mediums can channel their deepest thoughts. But I do believe that the human-dog relationship can be deeply meaningful. Dogs have a remarkable gift for entering our lives at particular times and weaving themselves in."

Likewise, the converse is true: Humans can accept animals and the gifts they offer only if they're ready and receptive.

In that spirit, Katz embarks on his adventure, acquiring an old pickup truck, a winter's worth of hay, and, reluctantly, a gun. He meets and befriends salt-of-the-earth sorts who show up to lend a hand, guffaw at the city guy, or bail him out of trouble.

In addition to Katz's education of and by his dogs, he doesn't shirk the physicality of his adopted life as farmer. The winter he endures is bitter, the frostbite painful, the snow deep, and his knees rickety.

As the winter marches on, Katz does learn much. Working his farm by day and writing by night, he becomes better connected to the town around him, the country life, and members of his family. With his dogs as lens and emotive mirror, he discovers much about his parents and his psychic history that allows him to therapeutically dot his i's and cross his t's.

One central drama that unfolds within this miniature landscape is that of Homer, a troubled adopted border collie who is ill at ease in Katz's household. As owner and trainer, Katz is forced to come to terms with the fact that he must let Homer go.

''Trainers and behaviorists know, of course," he writes, ''that the good dog (like the bad dog) is a myth. Dogs are neither good nor bad; they are shaped by all sorts of factors." And, later: ''At some point I'd begun to enter the murky area where the boundary between the human's issues and the dog's troubles blur."

Eventually, Katz makes a tortuous connection between his own place in his family, his relationships with his father and sister, and that between him and his canine family.

Thus the book winds down, softly, a slow and thoughtful passage through an undulating psychic landscape -- part picaresque, part sermon. The cast of characters and arc of plot are minimalist, to be sure, and kitchen wisdom is dished in heaping helpings.

But Katz's world -- of animals and humans and their combined generosity of spirit -- is a place you're glad you've been.

Toward the end of the book, he writes: ''At least I had my dogs as spirits, prophets, guides, fellow citizens, and companions. . . . I wondered if Augustine had had a dog, and if so, why he never mentioned it."