Border Collie Quotes

“Mine. It's all mine.”
― Angelo Dirks

“It is not the job of the dog trainer to summon the dog’s generics, not to impose man’s will over dog’s. It may be worth noting that many Scottish hill dogs never know the weight”
― Donald McCaig, Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland For A Border Collie

“The trainer Tony Illey has said, “The most difficult thing I ever saw a dog do was bring a ewe who’d just lost her lamb through a field full of lambing ewes.”
Let me offer a gloss: Ewes with new lambs are extremely protective of their lambs and often charge a dog. When they lose sight of their lamb, they assume the dog has killed it, and despite his teeth will try determinedly to trample him. A ewe who’s lost her lamb will rush back and forth seeking it, bleating to other newborn lambs trying to collect one. The other mothers are confused by this, and when the dog gets near them they, too, go on the attack.
Unlike Tony Illey, I don’t think what this dog did was difficult. It was impossible. Knowing that the dog can read sheep better than any man and can react much quicker than any man, what commands would you give him?
Correct answer: his name.”
― Donald McCaig, Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland For A Border Collie

“By human standards, I know far more than the dogs do. But Luke and June can do what I cannot. In a millisecond, forty feet from just encountered range Rambouillets the dogs see, big as a Wall Drug bill board, which sheep is the leader. They immediately understand the complex social order in this particular miniflock. they know whether the sheep are ready to fight, split up, or break for the tall timber, because the sheep tell them what they mean to do. For the sake of that instant, for that millisecond, that's why the Mister and Missus have put so many miles beneath their paws. Luke and June have developed an all-sheep, all-breed, all-terrain method that doesn't give them an edge over dogs who've been working these sheep on this terrain all their lives, but does help them transmute the novel into the manageable”
― Donald McCaig, Mr. and Mrs. Dog: Our Travels, Trials, Adventures, and Epiphanies

“The sheepdog trial is a contest of farm and ranch dogs doing the same work they do every day at home. It's a simple test: dog runs out, gathers sheep, and fetches them to his shepherd. Dog drives the sheep through obstacles. Then dog and man sort the sheep and pen them. Any halfway decent sheepdog can do it but some are better than others”
― Donald McCaig, Mr. and Mrs. Dog: Our Travels, Trials, Adventures, and Epiphanies

“Every trainer I spoke to, though advocating methods as contradictory as Koehler and pharmacological behaviorism, agreed on four basic principles. The are magic principles, and so important that training may not help dogs living without them, while some dogs living with them require little formal training.
• Magic principle #1: Don’t be nuts!
• Magic principle #2: Puppies are baby dogs
• Magic principle #3: Exercise your dog
• Magic principle #4: Give your dog a job”
― Donald McCaig, Mr. and Mrs. Dog: Our Travels, Trials, Adventures, and Epiphanies

“If you have a border collie, and do your job, you will learn patience. if you have Labs, you will learn to stretch the boundaries of hygiene. I'm told that the original Labs hailed not from Labrador but from Newfoundland, where they worked with tough and tired fisherman who let them hang around but didn't provide organic or vegan dog food. As a result, Labs became scavengers, with little fussiness about what they ate.”
― Jon Katz, Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

“There was a dog on that Man's Best Friend show who supposedly understood like a thousand human words. Border collie, I think. Those guys need to switch to decaf.”
― Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Bob

“By obligation Pamela read me “The Posting,” a warning to would-be owners that pure Border collies are essentially smarter than your average local elected official and slippier than Cool Hand Luke. They can jump six-foot fences, dig under walls, open doors and gates and in an emergency, hot-wire any automobile manufactured before 1998.”
― William J. Thomas, The Dog Rules: