Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
A couple decades back, when my wife was pregnant, we lived next door to a nice couple who had an Australian Shepherd named Tuffy. Tuffy couldn't resist chasing us down the short street whenever we left for town (we lived just a mile from the city limits). He didn't want to catch us, he just wanted to keep us in line. One morning I was a bit ahead of my wife and Tuffy came racing out to terrorize my rear wheel. Unfortunately, Tuffy didn't see my wife and she didn't see him in time and she ran into him and went down in a heap. The woman next door, Karen, came out and was greatly concerned for my pregnant wife, but my wife was not injured in the least.
We all had to conspire to keep the incident a secret from her husband because we all knew that if Scott found out Tuffy had crashed into a pregnant woman that would be the last of Tuffy. Fortunately, Scott never found out and Tuffy lived happily ever after. In fact, Karen convinced Scott to take Tuffy out to his cattle pastures pretty much daily. I think he had a lot more fun herding cows than he ever had herding me.
This is one of the BIG issues with domesticating what essentially are working dogs. They are bred to herd, and they are bred to work wide open paddocks. Keeping a dog like that on a suburban block or in a house is against their nature, and in my opinion verges on cruelty.
In fact, if you ride past cattle and sheep farms, as we have often, the working dogs are chained and penned outside. They aren't mollycoddled in any way, even though they are very expensive animals to buy from breeders.