Top 39 Quotes & Sayings by Donald McCaig

A sheepdog trial is the most difficult test of a man and dog ever devised.

I had been saying to myself for a good many years that I was really a writer and that I was in advertising temporarily.

I'm out of the terse Hemingway school.

The events of the Civil War are so odd, ferocious, and poignant that fictional characters do well simply to inhabit them.

A young dog's faith is absolute... Dogs are notorious for hope. Dogs believe that this morning, this very morning, may begin a day of fascination, easily grander than any day in the past.

It is the job of the dog trainer to summon the dog's genetics, not to impose man's will over dog's.

In life, sometimes it pays off when you really don't give a damn.

Border collies were trained in Scotland. They have the Scots' commands in their genes. At the dog trials, the owners wear those three-piece western suits, cowboy boots and 10-gallon hats, but they carry Scots shepherd's crooks over their arms and talk to their dogs in Scots accents.

I'd rather talk about dogs than about me.

Though each trainer believes his or her method is best, I don't think it matters which method the pet owner adopts so long as that owner finds a capable mentor and sticks with the training. Eventually you will learn to see your dog, and when that happens, the richness of your and your dog's lives will tell you what to do next.

I don't care to read about Garrison Keillor. We cover the same sort of territory, and I don't need to know anything more about him.

That we have altered the dog genetically is well understood; it is hardly known how they changed us.

Believe in your work.

If you don't have work for a border collie or time to train it properly, your bright young border collie will invent his own work, and chances are you won't like it.

Sheep may not be brilliant, but they know that sheep in pen is stage number one of lamb chops.

Driving alone, you can make 800 miles a day.

The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force.

I am no historian but have tried to stick tight to the facts.

Research is the historical novelist's map, constraint, and purest energy.

What we didn't realize then - and one of the many things Timothy Leary was wrong about - is that when you drop out, you inevitably also drop in.

Had we settled in Pennsylvania, there's no way I would have written a Confederate novel.

When people say what is 'Gone With the Wind' about, they say it's a love story between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. But Mammy is almost a third party.

If you get a dog that goes out there and bumps the sheep, comes on too hard, the sheep don't trust him.

I'm a workaday writer.

I am built funny. Picture Mark Twain's head on Ichabod Crane's body. Now hold your mental picture to the light and crumple it.

Since dogs could hear and smell better than men, we could concentrate on sight. Since courage is commonplace in dogs, men's adrenal glands could shrink. Dogs, by making us more efficient predators, gave us time to think. In short, dogs civilized us.

You have to train a dog to think.

Once they become AKC registered, the newspapers will become flooded with ads for them. And you'll see Border collies in pet stores and animal shelters.

The majority of border collie owners and breeders don't want to have anything to do with the show ring.

I do not believe you can work with animals - certainly you cannot train them - without deciding that if humans have souls, dogs do, too.

Rhett Butler is very mysterious. He disappears, he reappears, God knows where he goes. We know nothing about his family to speak of.

Border collies predate the British Kennel Club. They've been bred consistently for 100 years. They're the last working dogs in the world, with some minor exceptions. Bench shows, dog shows have ruined the other breeds, like the hunting dogs. Border collies are peasant dogs, and that's protected them.

It has been 20,000 years since man and dog formed their partnership.

Humans have externalized their wisdom-stored it in museums, libraries, the expertise of the learned. Dog wisdom is inside the blood and bones.

People often wonder just what trainers give the sheepdog in exchange for its boundless willingness. Food treats and praise sit on the trainer's shelf, untouched, unused. The sheepdog is shown its possibilities, he learns what life is like for a good dog and is invited to walk in a rational world whose farthest boundaries are defined by grace.

More often than we care to admit, inconsequential decisions change our lives.

I have a writer’s concentration: intense, but flickering.

There is no more off-leash reliable, calm, sophisticated, go-with-you-anywhere dog than a trained sheepdog.

Hell yes! Gentle birth’s got to be good for something!