May 20, 2014

"I suggest sheep submit."



Says Meade, about Gavin, the Border Collie.

26 comments:

gerry said...

We had a border collie once. He did our taxes.

Mike and Sue said...

Strong eye.

The Crack Emcee said...

No shit.

Great photo, too.

Bill Crawford said...

"I suggest a sheep summit. We can work out our differences to a mutually acceptable resolution."

Alex said...

Don't look at the eye!

MadisonMan said...

It's time for a National Conversation on submission, says the sheepdog.

Original Mike said...

We were in Australia last month and went to a sheep herding demonstration. I was particular impressed by the response of the sheep. 110% of their attention was focused on the dog. They appeared to be scared shitless. Do they instinctively view the dog as a wolf?

Christopher said...

I hope this isn't too off-topic, but it would just be wrong if Althouse and Meade didn't see this: In dogs’ play, researchers see honesty and deceit, perhaps something like morality

The Crack Emcee said...

Bill Crawford,

"I suggest a sheep summit. We can work out our differences to a mutually acceptable resolution."

HA! tim in vermont kinda suggested that line as a white sop to blacks yesterday.

It read exactly the same way,...

Sydney said...

All we like sheep have gone astray, everyone to his own way. But not when Gavin's watching!

Quaestor said...

I have a friend who has owned collies for years. His current dog is a bitch called Rosie with the exact coloring of this example.

(... dog is a bitch... goofy wording, equivalent to writing boy is a girl)

I met him on the street the other day while walking the deerhound. I was saddened to learn that Rosie has hip dysplasia. She's in considerable pain and may be destroyed. Her sire also had that defect and met that end after several pain-related bite incidents.

It's too bad such an intelligent breed has that problem.

Quaestor said...

"I suggest sheep submit"

Could mean:

The dog has a theory about sheep behavior.

Or

The dog has a non-negotiable demand... though a semicolon would help this meaning.

CStanley said...

He looks rather bossy.

Bill Crawford said...

Crack,

What can I say? I own dogs and this was a dog sop to sheep.

I'm a sheepist.

President-Mom-Jeans said...

Says the Democrats to American citizens, more like it.

Bob R said...

If you've never seen a well trained border collie work a flock of sheep, it's pretty impressive. We had a sheep farm when I was growing up. Didn't have a trained dog, but knew a few people who did. Amazing what they could do.

Bob R said...

"They appeared to be scared shitless. Do they instinctively view the dog as a wolf?"

In my experience, they view all strange dogs as predators. They can get used to a dog that's around the farm and trained not to chase them. (Biggest problem with dogs on small farms that I saw was a couple of stray dogs that wanted to "play" and panicked the sheep into piling up in the corner of a barn and crushing the bottom ones.)

Quaestor said...

I'm a sheepist.

Is that anything like a sheeple?

Why is it that the tinfoil hat brigade who have their CAPSLOCK glued down always end their screeds with WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!! ? (n.b. I'm not including Crack in this group. Crack wears his chapeau de papier alu at a rakish angle.)

I mean are sheep notably sleepy? If so are sheep dogs just taking advantage?

lemondog said...

re: : In dogs’ play,....I repost Beston 1925:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Henry Beston - The Outermost House 1925

Lance said...

"That'll do, pig. That'll do."

rhhardin said...

Bird dog.

Guildofcannonballs said...

No freckles.

Real dogs have freckles.

Anonymous said...

If I were a collie, I'd want to have Gavin's puppies.

Original Mike said...

"We were in Australia last month and went to a sheep herding demonstration."

Oops, I meant New Zealand. We were in both, but the sheep herding was in NZ.

But you know, they all sounded the same. Couldn't tell them apart.

Original Mike said...

Apparently, the economics of sheep is faltering, so NZ farmers are replacing their sheep herds with deer (venison).They're culling their sheep herds. I did my part when I was there. I bet I ate two sheep all by myself.

AlanKH said...

"I suggest sheep submit."

Sure that's not a line lifted from Fifty Shades of Grey?