Izzy & Lenore: Two Dogs, an Unexpected Journey, and Me by Jon Katz
Izzy & Lenore: Two Dogs, an Unexpected Journey, and Me by Jon Katz
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jon Katz has become a name in writing about Bedlam Farm and his dogs and other animals. In this book, he writes more about his Border Collie, Izzy, whom he adopted. Izzy was running on acreage with another Border Collie, but both of them were all but feral, having lived with little to no human contact. When Katz adopts Izzy, the dog had never been inside a vehicle nor a house. However, there was something about Izzy that made Katz decide he wanted this dog.
While there's very little about what happened with Izzy's socialization, only that he was a very fast learning, the main part of this novel deals with three things - Katz's venturing into Hospice care as a volunteer with Izzy at his side and the people they meet, Lenore coming into Katz's life, and Katz's own dealings with depression, and his long road in recovering from it.
There are some very touching chapters within this book, mostly dealing with the hospice patients. There are also some funny bits, mostly dealing with the animals in Katz's care. It's a very enjoyable look at a dark time in someone's life, and how he worked through it, with help from various people (and animals, in their own ways).