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“Most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.

But there’s a third kind of person. The sheepdog. Sheepdogs have fangs like wolves. But their instinct isn’t predation. It’s protection. All they want, what they live for, is to protect the flock.”
― Barry Eisler, Livia Lone

“I dare say a good many... would have kept quiet and thought about keeping on the right side of the Chief, but I'm afraid I'm not much good at that.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Your responsibility to be ready for the fight, never ends.”
― James Yeager

“If a dog manages and directs a thousand sheep, it is not because of the genius of the dog, but because of the sheep's folly!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The sheepdog is shown its possibilities, he learns what life is like for a good dog and is invited to walk in a rational world whose further boundaries are defined by grace.”
― Donald McCaig, Nop's Hope

“bob Brennan went on to become a fair dog handler, and he and Shep won several open trials, but he never forgot the slight woman working his dog, better than he could, out in the middle of nowhere; woman, dog, sheep moving with great precision, and she never repeated a request (Bob Brennan couldn't call them commands), and she spoke so soft - just Penny and Shep and the sky, stretching from Canada to Mexico, lighter blue at the rim than in the bowl overhead. She never forgot it either.”
― Donald McCaig, Nop's Trials

“Bob Brennan went on to become a fair dog handler, and he and Shep won several open trials, but he never forgot the slight woman working his dog, better than he could, out in the middle of nowhere; woman, dog, sheep moving with great precision, and she never repeated a request (Bob Brennan couldn't call them commands), and she spoke so soft - just Penny and Shep and the sky, stretching from Canada to Mexico, lighter blue at the rim than in the bowl overhead. Shep never forgot it either.”
― Donald McCaig, Nop's Hope

“Men trial sheepdogs for the usual metaphysical reasons. Some men seek justice in their own lifetime. Others, a type of immortality. Bill Crowe of Virginia once explained that he trialed, "For the pure intellectual achievement of it." Some men hope that love is proof against adversity. Some trial sheepdogs to forget - bad marriages can make good sheepdog handlers - and others trial to remember: that single moment, the flash of light on a dog's coat, the dog dead now twenty years. A few men trail because that's the only way they can reduce the world to their size; others trial for the raw information trialing provides, a flux they can puzzle over for a lifetime.”
― Donald McCaig, Nop's Hope

“Dogs are notorious for hope. Dogs believe that this morning, this very morning, may begin a day of fascination, easily grander than any day in the past. Perhaps the work did go badly yesterday, perhaps the humans are wild with sulks and rages, but this morning can yet be saved: don't humans understand anything?

Every morning, in dog pounds all over America, hundreds of dogs awake to their last day with gladness in their hearts.”
― Donald McCaig, Nop's Hope

“Somewhere the help don’t quit as soon as the boss walks out the door. I’m gonna need a dozen clean pens.â€�
The lambing barn had four rows of pens against the long walls and back-to-back in the middle. At any one time the pens could hold eighty ewes and their lambs. When things went well, a ewe came into the barn on Monday and left on Thursday, and after her apartment was renovated the shepherd could install a newcomer. When a ewe had trouble â€� mastitis, milk fever, pneumonia, blue bag â€� the pens filled with sick sheep and the sheep housing stock shrank. Penny spent a couple hours examining the ewes in the barn, medicating those that needed it, turning others with their lambs out into the sunshine. She slipped bands on lambsâ€� tails, checked new mothers for milk supply, milked out ewes for their colostrum, ear notched bad mothers so they could be culled.”
― Donald McCaig, Nop's Hope

“Rosie, let's get to work”
― Jon Katz, Soul of a Dog: Reflections on the Spirits of the Animals of Bedlam Farm

“And trotting soberly at his heels, with the gravest, saddest eyes you ever saw, a sheep-dog puppy.

A rare dark gray he was, his long coat, dashed here and there with lighter touches, like a stormy sea moonlit. Upon his chest an escutcheon of purest white, and the dome of his head showered, as it were, with a sprinkling of snow. Perfectly compact, utterly lithe, inimitably graceful with his airy-fairy action; a gentleman every inch, you could not help but stare at him â€� Owd Bob oâ€� Kenmuir.”
― Alfred Ollivant, Bob, Son of Battle

“At sound and scent of the approaching huddle of sheep, Treve leaped to his feet; queer ancestral instincts tugging at the back of his alert young brain. In all his eight months of life he had never seen nor smelt a sheep. But his Scottish ancestors, for a hundred generations, had earned their right to live by tending such creatures as these which came trooping past the shack. Something far stronger than himself urged the put to action.”
― Albert Payson Terhune, Treve

“I’ve never been entirely sure what it is that makes trialing so strangely compulsive. Partly it’s an enjoyment of the company of my fellow sheepdog enthusiasts, many of whom are shepherds and share a unique understanding of the curious life we lead: partly too it’s a love of the sheepdog and it’s working relationship with man â€� but, to me at least, it’s also a sport rather than a hobby, and for that reason brings all the satisfaction, and frustration, that winning, losing and sometimes just competing brings with them.”
― David Kennard, The Dogs of Windcutter Down: One Shepherd's Struggle for Survival

“From the word go, the two of us have been a team. I was not an experienced trainer, but she and I worked through it all together, both learning as we went. She is the most loyal dog I will ever own. She will sit and gaze into my eyes. I am her world. She does not have the strength of some sheepdogs, but what she lacks in raw power she more than makes up for in pure effort. If I were to set her an impossible task, she would persevere to her last breath rather than let me down. Whether we are out checking the sheep, gathering lambs for dosing or just sitting together in my car, having lunch and listening to Radio 1, we are inseparable. I doubt I will ever own another dog like her.”
― Emma Gray, One Girl and Her Dogs: Life, Love and Lambing in the Middle of Nowhere

“Alfie is the goon in the team: think of Scooby-Doo with the brains of Homer Simpson. People often can’t believe he’s a collie because he is as smooth as a piglet and built like a lurcher with long legs and a deep chest. He is a true athlete and can run for miles and miles without tiring. Dog owners call it ‘having a good engine.â€� He is obedient to the last â€� but sometimes ‘obedientâ€� can be another word for ‘stupid.â€� If I ask him to lie down and get side-tracked, he will stay glued to the very spot until eventually I come looking for him ten minutes later. I would take sheep out the same gate every day for a week and on day seven Alfie would still need to be told what to do. But he is a great work dog and very honest, and no matter what situation he gets into he is always listening for my commands and has full faith that I will not see him wrong.”
― Emma Gray, One Girl and Her Dogs: Life, Love and Lambing in the Middle of Nowhere