Every profession seems to produce a savant who can write about it with a sensibility that few equate with workers in that field. For chefs that writer is Anthony Bourdain, and in the same field, going farther back was George Orwell as a hapless busboy in Down and Out in Paris and London, letting us in on the full horror below-stairs at swank European hotels. The veterinarian James Herriot for many decades locked up the arena of animal writing, but today the farmer most admired for sharing vicarious hours with his livestock — and most notably his dogs — is Jon Katz.

Mr. Katz spoke to a rapt crowd of some 50 people at the Edgartown Library last Saturday afternoon. He is the perfect lecturer — funny, wry, the smartest guy in the room who is also self-effacing. He’s balding, wears glasses, a slate-blue cardigan sweater over jeans and well-worn, lace-up boots — pretty much the outfit you’d expect from a farmer on an author’s tour.

Mr. Katz is promoting his new book, Rose in a Storm, a work of fiction about a border collie on a farm in upstate New York. However, since the author happens to have a border collie named Rose on a farm in upstate New York, clearly this is one writer who takes the old adage “write what you know” seriously.

In the novel, the dog Rose is compelled, in teamwork with her owner, to save a farm and its animals in the middle of a blizzard. Mr. Katz recounted the true tale of how his border collie Rose was only six months old when a storm hit Bedlam Farm and some sheep, a ram and several cows got out through an open gate. After the puppy put up an unstoppable racket, he let her out, fearing that she too would be lost. He found her in a nearby gully, the farm animals neatly assembled for roll call. With young Rose’s help, he led them back through the fields to the barn.

Another one of his dogs, Lenore, he calls the hound of love, and for dog lovers, we know what he means. But his most amazing canine is Izzy, a black and white border collie taken from a farm where he was underfed, banned from the house and brutishly under-loved. Izzy appeared so unadaptable, even under the improved conditions of Bedlam Farm, that Mr. Katz began looking around for some other means of doggy rehabilitation. And then a curious development took place. Mr. Katz, who had begun to take an interest in hospice work, discovered that Izzy had a positive genius for comforting people with terminal illness. The author described a patient so angry that he yelled at everyone who came near him. Enter Izzy, who appeared to be evaluating the situation, then hopped up on the far end of the bed. He gently crept along the top of the covers and rested his head against the ill man’s shoulders. The man’s face cleared of all tension. He smiled at Izzy, closed his eyes and lay at rest. Since then Izzy has been a guest with his owner on NPR, CBS and CNN.

On Saturday Mr. Katz expressed strong views about the explosion in dog training industries. “Training in America is a catastrophe!” he said, “It’s a Ponzi scheme and there’s no good program that’s been invented yet.”

The author’s own philosophy rests on letting the dog do what it’s hardwired to do. If Rose the border collie is going to herd all his guests at a Barnes & Noble book talk into the parking lot (this actually happened) then no amount of treats or readings of some canine riot act is going to change this behavior. Answer: Leave Rose at home or make your peace with signing books from the back of a pickup truck. Mr. Katz also believes too many dog devices are sold in pet stores. “Don’t buy a lot of things that don’t work. And don’t think you need to entertain your pets all day. It’s good for dogs to have times of calm,” he said. He is also concerned with the unregulated crossbreeding and inbreeding of dogs these days. “There should be oversight by veterinarians and geneticists,” he said.

The talk was followed by a question-and-answer session that threatened to overflow into the following Tuesday with audience members eager to share their own dog anecdotes and to learn more from Mr. Katz’s perceptive and witty expertise.

For those who haven’t read any or all of Mr. Katz’s seven books on dogs or any of his other 12 books, both fiction and nonfiction, many are available at Island libraries and in Island bookstores. The talk was a kickoff for the Love Our Libraries Tour that will continue in other places on the Eastern Seaboard; Mr. Katz’s visit to the Vineyard was thanks to his friend Jan Pogue, publisher of Vineyard Stories and a resident of Edgartown.

Rose in a Storm (Villard Books, $24) is available at Island bookstores. Mr. Katz has another new book due to arrive in October 2011 titled Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die.