Letters – A story about sheepdogs

To the Editor:

Once upon a time there some pastures filled with sheep guarded by sheepdogs. The sheepdogs in the first pasture noticed that all the sheepdogs in the other pastures had bigger bones than they did. The sheepdogs asked the Shepherd for bigger bones.

The Shepherd said they had no bigger bones in this pasture and if the sheepdogs wante

d bigger bones they were free to go to the other pastures. The Shepherd explained that he would just get some sheep puppies that would be happy with little bones and train them to be sheepdogs.

This went on for years and then some of the sheep in the first pasture complained about always having sheep puppies. The Shepherd then went to the sheepdogs and said, “We will give you a bigger bone. Not as large a bone as the sheepdogs in the other pasture have, but a nice-sized bone.”

The sheepdogs were happy and stayed home for the most part.

After a couple of years the Shepherd came and took away the bigger bones and gave the sheepdogs a small bone and said, “You should be happy because you had the bigger bones for two years.”

The sheepdogs saw that the sheepdogs in the other pastures still had bigger bones, and that their bones were getting bigger, so they left and went to the pastures with the bigger bones.

The Shepherd in the first pasture had to go back to getting sheep puppies to train to be sheepdogs.

One day, the first Shepherd had nothing but sheep puppies.

Then the Wolves showed up! Guess whose sheep got taken!

The moral of this story is: if you want to keep the sheep safe, you have to feed the sheepdogs.

David W. Brent

A Battle-Scarred Old Sheepdog

Luling