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A turn-of-the-century farm shepherd
L. Miller, Columbia, Pa. (from a letter in the magazine
Country Life In America, June 15, 1912)

"I showed the reproduction of an old-fashioned shepherd dog, which appears in your December 15th number, to a farmer who, ten years ago, owned a remarkably intelligent dog of this breed. His dog's name was Shep, and as I showed the illustration in your paper to the man, he said at once: 'Yes, that is the very dog! He's exactly like mine was, except the markings. And that queer drop of the lower lip is just the way my Shep curled his lower lip when he came toward you wagging his tail. We called it "Shep's smile."'

"The farmer said that one day he was plowing, and after coming home he missed the dog. All the next day passed and the dog did not return. On the third day the farmer went in search of him, and in a field he found Shep guarding the coat which the farmer had hung on the fence when plowing, and had entirely fogotten. They had called the dog, who must have heard them, but he refused to leave his master's coat. 'It would have been of no use to send the hired man for the coat,' said the farmer, 'for the dog wouldn't have let him touch it.'

"'We used to send Shep,' said he, 'to bring the cows home from the pasture at milking time. One day he failed to return, but barked toward the house from a hill-top field. I went up to see what was the matter and found that one of the cows had a calf down in the hollow and would not be driven by Shep, and that her calf had got under the fence into another field. The dog ran to this spot, which was a thicket, and back again to me, to show me where the calf was, and why he couldn't perform his usual task.

"'He used to follow strangers into the house and sit near them and watch their every movement. He guarded the children, and would permit them to maul him about till they got too rough, when he would walk to another part of the room out of their reach."

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Linda Rorem
e-mail Pacifica19@aol.com

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