Grieving his father’s sudden passing, a film scholar and father of two boys finds solace in the picturesque idyll of Ireland’s East Clare region, where he discovers and adopts an enigmatic border collie from an abandoned farm. What is the essence of a sheepdog? As much a part of Ireland’s traditional and rural life as the countryside itself, working animals are known to be incredibly smart, loyal, with distinct personalities. Dara Waldron’s memoir about the wandering border collie he adopted the year after his father died is an animal rescue story, a journey through waves of grief and understanding, and a reflection on place with a happy ending. To make a family pet of Oscar, Waldron enacts the daily ritual of walking the rugged hills and rivers of Ireland’s woodlands in its intemperate weather–rain, sleet, and snow. Oscar’s instinct, as a sheepdog, is to run away and return to his handler. Testing the limits of Waldron’s tolerance and trying his fragile trust, days with Oscar are defined by the author’s attempts to process his grief. Slowly it seeps into his consciousness: Oscar is asking him to understand a creature who lives for another, who will always return. In lyrical description of Ireland’s mystical landscape, along with meditations on art, philosophy, and animal rights, this exquisitely wrought memoir about one man and his dog experiencing a symbiotic calling foregrounds the healing terrain of nature, and the true purpose and breadth of life.
