A Day in the Life of Bob, the Sheepdog (for Jane)

Bob and his 2 sheepdog companions are hard workers. Every morning they have to bring the sheep to the mountain side on which they graze, and every late afternoon they have to safely bring those sheep home from the mountain side.


The mountain side is very steep and very rocky, with many small cliff faces from which a dumb-ass sheep can fall, and can break a leg or even die. Bob has seen the carcasses and skeletons of sheep who fell to their deaths on the mountainside. Bob has worked very hard to please his man and to learn all the commands that his man tells him. The man can see what needs to be done, and tells Bob and the other dogs where to go and what to do once they get there.


Today, Bob had a daring and scary adventure. While rounding up a bunch of sheep and getting them down from the edge of a very high cliff, one very dumb, very large and wooly ewe and her cute little lamb decided to go off on their own. While Bob and his companions were busy chasing the other sheep to a lower, safer position, these two soon got themselves stuck in a dead-end, from which the only safe way out was to retrace their steps, and the darn things just would not do that, no matter what Bob did. Bob’s man was climbing down the mountain to him and the sheep, and the rest of the sheep, now in a safe place lower down, had all stopped to watch the trouble. The lamb finally decided to jump down a very steep cliff, and Bob—along with all the onlookers, human and sheep—held his breath, afraid his man would blame him if the lamb got hurt. But the lamb was safe, and began leaping about happily, the way lambs do, but in the wrong direction. Then the lamb’s mommy took off after her lamb, jumping down the cliff too, and it was VERY scary to watch. Bob wondered if she would lose her footing and just go rolling down the cliff, a fat ball of wool, just rolling and rolling down the mountainside (sometimes Bob thinks that might look funny, but he doesn’t tell his man that). But the ewe made it safely, too, and began following her lamb. Bob hesitated for a bit, scared to go after them, but finally hurled himself down that cliff, too, his legs going faster than he could control. Head over ass, he fetched up at the bottom of it, and shook himself to clear his head, looking around for those pain-in-the-neck sheep. They, by now, had spotted their friends lower down, watching them, and had found a way to join them. Bob’s man, seeing from a distance that the ewe and her lamb were finally where they were supposed to be, was whistling and calling for Bob to come back to him. Bob kept going back and forth under that cliff, trying to find a way to go back up to his man, but he couldn’t find a way. He kept trying to leap back up the cliff, but couldn’t make it, sliding back down the mud and rocks. Poor Bob was frantic to obey his man and he just couldn’t. After many long minutes of going back and forth and trying to climb that darn cliff, Bob finally heard his man’s voice and whistle lower down. He ran a little to the left, and finally saw his man and his dog friends coming toward him. Bob was so happy, and he ran as fast as he could, over rocks and heather, to get to his man. His man was faster than he was, though, because his man had easier terrain to travel. When Bob finally got to his man’s side, he was embarrassed at his failures, and a little worried that he would get in trouble. But instead his man petted him, said, “Good Bob,” and gave him a new job to do. Bob—along with all the human onlookers—was relieved. (A true story, as observed by Barbara and Donald.)