Orthodox monks breed, train canines in upstate New York

ANIMALS

Brother Luke, an Orthodox Christian monk, holds his 10-week-old German shepherd Pyrena at the New Skete monastery, where he directs the dog breeding program that has provided financial and spiritual support to the community for decades outside Cambridge, N.Y. GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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By Giovanna Dell’orto

The Associated Press

CAMBRIDGE, New York >> After he and his fellow monks sang morning prayers in their church nestled in a forest, Brother Luke walked back to his residence to be greeted by a different kind of choir.

Lucy and Iso excitedly woofed as they spotted the Orthodox monk, who heads the monastery’s German shepherd breeding program, coming to take them and 10-week-old Pyrena for their morning walks.

For nearly six decades, the monks of New Skete in upstate New York have financially supported their community and deepened their spiritual life by breeding German shepherds and running on-site, weekslong training programs for all kinds of canines.

“One of the things that a dog teaches is about God — forgiveness and love and connection, those are attributes of God,” Brother Luke said on a sunny October morning, while Lucy nosed around fallen leaves and Iso kept a vigilant eye on his monk. “In the rough and tumble of life, we don’t always exhibit God’s love as well as the dog does.”

The New Skete monks’ path from Catholic to Orthodox

The small community — today comprising 10 monks and about the same number of adult German shepherds — was started by Franciscan friars who were seeking a more contemplative yet rooted spiritual structure than the Catholic orders were providing them, said Brother Marc. One of the founders — and now 82 — he directs the choir at New Skete together with Brother Luke.

They were inspired by the “explosion of wonderfulness” of the Second Vatican Council to return to ancient but simpler and more accessible practices, like those of the first ascetics in the Egyptian desert, from whom the name skete derives, and who also received pilgrims and performed other community services. The monks officially joined the Orthodox Church in America more than four decades ago; icons of male and female saints from Eastern and Western Christianity adorn the golden walls of the larger of the monastery’s two churches.

By the late 1970s, what had started as a gift of one German shepherd, Kyr, to protect and keep company to the little band of brothers on a forested mountainside where New York and Vermont touch, was revolutionizing their monastic life.

“He became part of the emotional life of the community. All these celibate men living together, where’s the heart in all this?” Brother Marc recalled of Kyr and how his presence brought joy and smoothed over any tensions.