“THE SHEEPDOGSMost humans truly are like sheepWanting nothing more than peace to keepTo graze, grow fat and raise their young,Sweet taste of clover on the tongue.Their lives serene upon Life’s farm,They sense no threat nor fear no harm.On verdant meadows, they forage freeWith naught to fear, with naught to flee.They pay their sheepdogs little heedFor there is no threat; there is no need.To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries,Roaming watchful round the peripheries.These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roarWith the fetid reek of the carnivore,Too like the wolf of legends told,To be amongst our docile fold.Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they?They have no use, not in this day.Lock them away, out of our sightWe have no need of their fierce might.But sudden in their midst a beastHas come to kill, has come to feastThe wolves attack; they give no warningUpon that calm September morningThey slash and kill with frenzied gleeTheir passive helpless enemyWho had no clue the wolves were thereFar roaming from their Eastern lair.Then from the carnage, from the rout,Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!”Thus is our nature but too our plightTo keep our dogs on leashes tightAnd live a life of illusive blissHearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss.Until he has us by the throat,We pay no heed; we take no note.Not until he strikes us at our coreWill we unleash the Dogs of WarOnly having felt the wolf pack’s wrathDo we loose the sheepdogs on its path.And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before;We love our sheep,we Dogs of War.Russ Vaughn2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment101st Airborne DivisionVietnam 65-66”

“Did I want a dog? No. Did I need a dog? Also no. We were six kids running for our lives, not knowing where our next meal was coming from. Could we afford to feed a dog? Wait for it—no.”

“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”

“So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them… That’s what happens, like it or not. And because that’s what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear… Coach Bob knew it all along: you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.”

“We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls'.”

“We humans may be brilliant and we may be special, but we are still connected to the rest of life. No one reminds us of this better than our dogs. Perhaps the human condition will always include attempts to remind ourselves that we are separate from the rest of the natural world. We are different from other animals; it's undeniably true. But while acknowledging that, we must acknowledge another truth, the truth that we are also the same. That is what dogs and their emotions give us-- a connection. A connection to life on earth, to all that binds and cradles us, lest we begin to feel too alone. Dogs are our bridge-- our connection wo who we really are, and most tellingly, who we want to be. When we call them home to us, it'as as if we are calling for home itself. And that'll do, dogs. That'll do.”