Herding Quotes

“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

“I feel helpless, as though he's herding me around a chessboard to checkmate.”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“My soul mate on this journey has been Orson. He brought me here. He stand with me here. Dogs are emotive, affectionate, and stimulating far beyond the capacity of the brightest-colored fish. A life with dogs - since the are animals, not human - is always an encounter with nature, no matter where it occurs, one that quite frequently connects us to our pasts. They're simple creatures, but they provide sensory diversity, opportunities for discovery and imagination, both connection and solitude - they are certainly radioactive jewels of memory.”
― Jon Katz, A Good Dog: The Story of Orson, Who Changed My Life

“The beauty of herding sheep with dogs, isn't displaying or winning awards. I'd never entered Rose in any competition. It's the sense of wordless partnership, the moment where the dog's instincts and the herder's experience fuse into that moment, if she wasn't already there. She wasn't merely resting by the tree; she was sitting with her sheep, watching over them, staying among them, comfortable enough with herself and with them to be still.”
― Jon Katz, Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

“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

“To discern profits only when it is within the ken of the market herd is not the acme of investing excellence”
― Amah Lambert, The Art of Investing

“If you ask me, it looks like some kind of L.A. gang fight instead of a sheep herding contest.”
― Lawrence Wertan, The Lost Champion