Sheep, Sheep Dogs and Shepherds...

chris_gerrib raised some interesting thoughts in a post yesterday which has had me pondering the delightful stupidity of the original concept.

I'm a dog owner.  I've 2 American Field Lines Chocolate Labrador Retrievers.  The Field Lines bit is important and it's a major distinction from the English Labrador.  For British people reading this you'll not have met many field lines labs but basically they're the athletic thinner cousin of the labs that you're used to seeing and are far far far more energetic.  I'll come back to this in a minute.

The central thesis of the piece that Chris linked to was that the population can be looked at as sheep, wolves and sheep dogs.  The obvious implication I took away being the author proudly thought of himself as a sheep dog ready to strap on a holster and go deal with the wolves on behalf of the sheep who didn't like them much but needed to understand that they were doing it for their own good.

I've been thinking a lot about this.  And it might be something of a stupid/not-stupid duality.  I've spent some time with sheep dogs.  The RSPCA place where I used to volunteer to walk dogs was over running in border collies where people had got them as pets and realized that a mad as a bag of badgers herding dog doesn't make a good pet and sent them to the pound.  They're lovely dogs.  They are also a bit thick, and insanely energetic.  This is not surprising, they're breed to herd things, they chase things, they like nothing more than getting everything into a place where they can report in that they've herded it.  Field Lines Labs are pretty much the same about retrieving.  They are hugely energetic, a bit thick, especially when they are chasing things and will not ever stop.  EVER.  Our 7 year old who has a spinal column injury will run himself to death, literally without a thought for the pain he'll be in for a few days and even in pain and tired he'll still want to bring back balls.  Put a herding dog in a dog park and they'll herd the other dogs, including the hunting dogs doing what they've been bred to do, hunt.

You can imagine how that goes, when you're happily running around after the little green round fuzzy thing that keeps escaping from your owner at high velocity and some bloody stupid collie, corgie or the like tries to get in the way because they want you in a group with the other dogs.  Generally speaking the sheepdog will back down whimpering in those situations because even a labrador with it's teeth barred is something you don't want to mess with.

So, sure, think of yourselves as sheep dogs protecting the sheep.  The thing is.  We also have shepherds.  Who have guns (even in the UK) and generally have a view of the bigger picture and understand that they need to keep an eye on the sheep dogs too.  And my fear is that too many people are taking this meme to heart and doing really stupid things in the name of protecting the sheep (the current NSA crap springs to mind, as does a lot of the police state nonsense that Charles Stross wrote about.)  And that, at the core of this, we've ended up with a bunch of sheep dogs running the government farm, working on the basis that the sheep need to be protected all the time, herded into easy to watch groups and looked after for their own good.

So actually, maybe the analogy isn't completely stupid.  Maybe we do have a lot of sheep dogs out there proud and firm in the belief they're doing the right thing, just like Colonel Jessop, who just want to look after the rest of us.  And yes, sometimes you do need somebody, to quote him, on the wall, looking out ready to do the job.  But here's the thing.  I don't want a sheep dog doing that.  I want the fucking shepherd.