I’m sure there are plenty of people who would say the same about Katz.

I’m enough of a Terhune fan that I’ve collected his books for years, enough that the first time I went to NYC in my early twenties I begged William Secord, then director of the AKC Museum, to show me the Terhune items the museum had in storage. (He did. I touched one of Terhune’s typewriters — so well-used that the letters were worn off the keys — and held his revolver, perhaps the very same one you mention with regards to Fair Ellen.)

So … um … where’s the beef? My comparison between Katz and Terhune hinges entirely on the fact that they were writers who realized they could make a good living writing about dogs. So they both did.

Consider, for example, Katz’s view of good quality medical care for dogs:

What was the outer limit of what was appropriate to do for a dog? How much money and time was too much to spend? Living in this hamlet upstate, I’d seen the grinding poverty people struggled with. A family up the road lived in a trailer with gaping holes covered by tar paper. Hunters desperately asked to hunt on my property—not for sport, but to feed their families. I knew of dogs that got shot when their owners couldn’t afford veterinary care. Where was the balance between the care and money I lavished on Orson and the needs of human beings? I didn’t know, but I felt I was approaching the line, perhaps had already crossed it.

Terhune’s view was quite the opposite. His dogs got the best veterinary care available. When one of his pups was born blind, he hired an expert from Cornell’s Veterinary School to try to correct the problem. And he didn’t waste time agonizing about whether it was right to treat a blind dog when there were so many blind people who didn’t have medical treatment.

The logical consequence of Katz’s view is that it’s immoral to own dogs at all, because there are needy human beings who should get the resources given to dogs. (Of course, Katz thinks it’s perfectly fine to buy expensive golf carts.) In one of Terhune’s stories, a particularly revolting villain spews out this nonsense, which is emphatically rejected by Terhune.

Consider, also, Katz’s drivel about executing his dog:

So, I settled on the porch with Orson and read one of Arendt’s chapters on moral conduct. It was a warm late afternoon, and the hawks were circling slowly over the meadow in front of the farmhouse. Orson was dozing near me, Rose sitting by the fence, eyeing the sheep. Clementine was on the lawn on her back, snoring contentedly. It was terribly discouraging to have made it through these five-plus decades, to struggle to reach this place with Orson’s great help and inspiration, to be living on this beautiful farm, sitting on the porch on a lazy summer day—and be contemplating this awful act.
I felt old, weary, and sad.

Now, this is only part of it. It goes on and on, and is not about the dog at all but about Katz (“Poor me! Poor me! The awful choice I have to make! Look at me! See how I’m suffering!”).

Terhune’s description of his decision about euthanizing his blind puppy couldn’t be more different, focusing on the dog instead of himself:

There seemed but one thing left for me to do. And, sick at heart, I prepared to do it. I had grown fond of the gallant and gay golden youngster, and I hated to shoot her. Yet─
“I am going to put her out of her misery,” I told the Mistress.
“She has no misery to be put out of,” answered the Mistress. “She is having a beautiful time in life. She doesn’t know anything better. She thinks everyone and everything is like herself. Why should you kill her while she is so happy? Wait till she finds out she is afflicted. Is there so much happiness in the world that you should something that has found it?”
Perhaps that was maudlin sentimentality. Perhaps was splendid wisdom. In any case, it was enough to make me take the shells out of my gun, with an odd sense of relief.

What a shame it would be if readers were discouraged from reading Terhune’s works and finding out for themselves just how enjoyable they are. A good idea of the merits of his work can be found in an excerpt from his story about Fair Ellen, his blind Collie:

http://www.sunnybankcollies.us/excerpts4.htm

I’ve had blind dogs for years, and everything about Fair Ellen’s story rings true. If you like this “hackery,” you can find more at:

http://www.archive.org/details/ladadogal00terhrich

For Terhune to take the trouble he went to for this blind dog, and become her advocate, is incredible given the era in which he wrote. Even today, the execution of blind dogs for the crime of being unable to see is commonplace. No doubt the “real” experts, who loathed Terhune, would have executed Fair Ellen.

Who are these “real” experts who loathed him? Although Terhune showed Collies, he was quite blunt in his criticisms of the show-ring faddists who were ruining his beloved breed, and this made him many enemies. He also objected to breeders who kept their dogs like livestock, with no regard for the mental or psychological needs of their dogs. And his books educated readers about the ways that unscrupulous breeders could cheat them. This made him enemies as well.

Terhune’s “hack” writing style made it possible for him to reach a huge number of readers and push for more humane treatment of dogs. Had he been more literary, he would have done far less good. People love a good story, and that’s what Terhune gave them. No doubt a classic like Pride and Prejudice is a much finer piece of writing than any of Terhune’s books, but it sure didn’t keep me up at night flipping pages to find out what happened next. Many of Terhune’s books did.

If you’d like to find out for yourself why Terhune still has so many fans, you can find almost all of his dog books at amazon.com, abebooks.com, and other booksellers at very reasonable prices.

Over $1000, huh?

Uh, is that supposed to be a lot?

Just to put that in perspective: I spent a bit over $800 last year, on the digestive problems of a fourteen-year-old cat who, when I adopted her as a four-month-old runt of a feral litter, who was ill and not growing, I never expected to make it to ten years. Possibly not ten months.

She’s sitting on my lap now, purring.

I don’t have Jon Katz’s income, and no part of the income I do have comes from the pets.

Also, at least one of the bites occurred because Katz chose to put his stranger-reactive dog in an area near where contractors would be working, behind a fence only four feet high—something many adult men can reach over to try to pet the nice-looking dog. With all that land, he could have provided a different enclosure for Orson, with a more appropriate fence, and spared Orson the stress of the strangers coming and going, and wanting to make friends.

Yes, we can all learn from Jon Katz’s experiences, but not necessarily what he thinks he’s teaching.

I guess we’re all supposed to be abashed and embarrassed that you “couldn’t stop laughing” when you found our discussion here, but, you know? Not so much.

I’d bet Terhune had plenty of ability as a writer. He chose to hammer out formulaic hack novels about dogs (before that, he did hack newspaper serials), and he wrote them at an amazing pace, showing incredible discipline as a writer. And he certainly had an example of choosing sure money over the uncertainty of laboring over more serious work. His mother Mary Hawes Terhune, was a promising writer, but she made her fortune inventing the first modern cookbook (as Marion Harland).

So, no, I doubt he was much a dog expert at all, but he was likely a much better writer than the majority of his published works reveal.

Although, a lot of very good writers from his time are long forgotten, and he is not. So who’s to argue with his path?

I adored Terhune as a child, and have collected all his books as an adult, including the two biographies, his non-dog works and his mother’s cookbook. For whatever weaknesses he may have had a writer and “dog expert,” he inspired a lot of children with his love for his dogs — and he most definitely set me on my life’s path.