Jon Katz
Jon Katz
Jon Katzis an American journalist, author, and photographer. He was a contributor to the online magazine HotWired, the technology website Slashdot, and the online news magazine Slate. In his early career as an author he wrote a series of crime novels and books on geek subculture. More recent works focus on the relationship between humans and animals...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
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I think the new reality that's converging all this is, you have on the one end this culture of extraordinarily gifted outsiders who have patched together the Internet. And then there's the rest of the world -- business, education and politics -- that suddenly has woken up to the fact that they desperately need the Internet. It's very important. And so they become sort of central while still not being in the mainstream.
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(Jesse) was alienated from school. He wasn't learning much. He didn't have a lot of teachers who were close to him. He didn't have social acceptance. He had never been invited to a party in high school. He's very much a loner.
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It is possible to take something beautiful and lasting out of the heart-wrenching experience of seeing the animal you love move inexorably toward death.
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Kids leave us and go off on their own lives. Family members tell us what they think of us. Animals can't do that. They really are blank canvases, and we can project anything we want onto them. So the relationship is very pure and simple.
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There's a streak of alienation running through this culture, ... There's a streak of braininess, obsessiveness. I mean, anybody can use a computer, but not anybody's a geek.
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My goats are not contemplative, accepting, or introspective. They are the Greek chorus of my farm, sometimes of my life. They watch me closely and remind me that I am foolish.
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Goats are the cable talk show panelists of the animal world, ready at a moment's notice to interject, interrupt, and opine. They have something to say about everything, little of it complimentary. They are the most impertinent animals I have ever known.
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It's natural canine behavior to chew on all sorts of things, roll in other animals' droppings, hump and fight other dogs, menace anything that invades the home. All these behaviors can be curbed, but that takes a lot of work. Trainers say it requires nearly 2,000 repetitions of a behavior for a dog to completely absorb it.
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The Perfect Dog is an enticing fantasy pooch. It's the dog that instantly learns to pee outdoors, never menaces or frightens children, plays gently with other dogs, won't jump on the UPS guy, never rolls in gross things, eats only the appropriate food at the right time, and never chews anything not meant for him. This dog does not exist.
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I'm one of those people who has always struggled with emotions and revealing them. When my dog Orson died, I did this very male thing of 'It's just a dog and I'll just move on.' I was very slow to grasp the emotion. But Orson is the reason I started writing about dogs.
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Owners sometimes think their dogs have already suffered so much that they couldn't possibly inflict any more criticism. Yet it's that very firm, effective training that would make those dogs happier and more secure.
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It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.
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When people buy, rescue, or otherwise acquire a dog from unscrupulous breeders or amateur rescue groups, they are making a decision with ethical consequences. They have a profound responsibility to consider their actions; to gauge the dog's behavior, to train it thoroughly and rigorously, to protect other humans and dogs from harm.