by Don Haynes
I never owned a sheep or a herd of cows and I left the farm in 1948, a year after my daddy died. I am not a dog trainer who ever mastered the techniques of teaching a dog what they were capable of learning. But my love affair with English Shepherds is long and deep.
Daddy had hunting dogs but in 1945 he bought me a puppy–a registered English Shepherd. I named him “Pal.” We had draft horses and a family milk cow. On his own, Pal learned the differing calls Daddy used to call the cow or the horses and he would go to the back pasture and bring the right animal to the barn! If the horses came too close, when we had company visiting in the yard chairs, Daddy would simply say, “Pal, move the horses,” and he would herd them into another part of the pasture. Pal hated wharf rats and copperhead snakes and killed more than his share of both. I was a scrawny little runt and when a friend would “get me down” in a wrestling match, Pal would grab his pants leg and pull the “attacker” off me.
That “Pal” lived only two years. Uncharacteristically, he followed us on Easter morning when my brother took us in his car to a sunrise service. Upon our return, we found Pal’s warm body on the edge of the road. I cried for weeks. That English Shepherd had become a part of our family psyche.
In September of 1947, Daddy died. We sold the horses and faced the anxiety of leaving the farm, but we first had to survive the winter with no income. Mama “hired herself out” to tie tobacco for neighbors. With barely enough money to eat and pay the light bill, she paid $50 for another English Shepherd from the same dam that had whelped “Pal.”
I remember coming home from school and getting off the bus at a different farmhouse, going into their tobacco pack house basement and seeing a little black ball of fur curled up at Mama’s feet. We decided to give him the same name–“Pal II.” As he grew, he developed the characteristic brown dots over his eyes and brown toes. Mama and I made our second Pal a house dog at night; by day he never left my side wherever I went and whatever I was doing. He met the school bus every day and was truly my pal whether I was doing chores, playing, or sleeping. He could “read my mind.” Often, when we would go deep into the woods where I would sit and grieve for my daddy, Pal understood my mood. At night we would sometimes lie side by side in the cow pasture and look up at the canopy of stars. Pal was also protective. If he heard anything outside at night, he went to the door to go investigate. I would hate to have been a person out there “up to no good.”
The next summer we left the farm. Mama leased a “teacherage”–a county owned boarding house on the grounds of our rural school. Pal was nine months old. He moved with 
us and, at recess time, became quite adept at “fielding ground balls.” He would grab a “hot grounder” in his teeth and take it off the field as a toy! The principal said I had to get rid of him or build a pen. I was only thirteen but I built a pen and a dog house. It was Pal’s first-ever confinement, but he knew it would last only during school hours. With our twelve school teacher boarders, Pal ate well! Mama said, “Pal eats everything left from supper except the lemon slices.” The teachers who were dog lovers loved Pal. Pal proved something that I think is characteristic of English Shepherds. Whereas my first “Pal” was a farm dog; my second “Pal” lived on a busy school ground, met strangers constantly, mixed and mingled with school children and faculty, and adapted to a totally different life style.
I taught Pal to sit upon the command, “Sit.” The school custodian thought that was a trick and wanted to show him off one day to a visitor at the school. So he called Pal and told him to “set.” Pal just looked at him. Finally Mama came outside, saw the problem and told Pal to “sit,” which he obediently did. The teachers loved the story; they said that Pal knew his English grammar and would respond only when he heard the word “sit,” not “set.”
Pal was with me from my sixth grade year through high school. Every summer my mother lived in Greensboro with my brother. Pal usually never strayed but he wasn’t neutered; so apparently his hormones cost him his life. One morning he was not at the door. I went from college to my brother’s and walked the city streets and called and whistled and cried, but we never found him. He did love to ride and might have been dognapped.
Years past until I bought “Heather.” She was mostly black and tan but had white toes and a white chest. At that time I was vice president of a seminary and we lived in an apartment. Joan house trained Heather to use papers in the utility room. She would be outside and wait until she got to the papers to pee!!! Heather was a great dog, but we were living a very busy lifestyle. The children had gone and we both were working. Heather was an acrobat. I built a fence four feet high with a 2′ x 4′ mesh and she could climb out! That proved to be her death knell. She climbed out one day and was it by a car.
Immediately, we went to the same breeder and bought “Shannon.” 
Our daughter, Lisa, was in college and she picked out Shannon because she was the most aggressive of the litter and seemed to march her little self out and say, “Adopt me.” Shannon might have been the smartest ES we ever owned, and was certainly the most obedient. We had a cabin up in the mountains and she made many trips with us. She would sit beside me and hook her left paw over my elbow as I drove! When we took pit stops I never had a leash, but she was under total voice control. No matter her interest in another dog or anything else, I simply said, “Shannon” and she came to me.
We moved from the apartment to a parsonage when Shannon first came into heat. I put her in an 8′ x 16′ storage room at the back of the carport. It had a wooden window with a wooden sash. She chewed all the wood between the window lights and then jumped through the window! I had her spayed that day! We then moved to another parsonage with no fenced lot and she never strayed. Once when the church custodian went with me to the parsonage, he was standing behind me as I was unlocking the door when he suddenly began hollering, “That dog has my boot.” She did! She thought he was forcing me against the door and she was determined he would not bother me! That is the protective nature of an English Shepherd. They are not an attack dog; they are a protective dog.
Shannon’s demon was her skin disease–seborrhea. She developed “hot spots” and would chew the hair off. Her hair was dull and thin. She had to take a steroid injection every week for years. People thought she had mange in the summer months when her seborrhea became worse.
At night in spring, summer, and fall, Shannon slept on the front porch that was right under our bedroom window. One night she awakened me, barking. I raised the window and noticed she was at the edge of our yard looking toward the empty house next door. I called her and she would come and then turn back as if beckoning me to go with her. I went out and saw lights coming on as someone moved from room to room next door. Shannon led me to the edge of our lot just as a thief emerged from the front door of the empty house. She charged across the yard and held him at bay with her snarl and growl. Joan had come to the window and called the police. Shannon held him there for several minutes until the police came and arrested him. She never charged him, but when he moved an inch, she would move toward him and back him to the door again! This is another English Shepherd instinct; they know when it is time to become aggressive.
I fenced in the entire back yard and gave Shannon access to the back porch so she could be near us and still be safe. One Christmas our community had some break-ins when thieves stole the presents from around the tree; so we did a dumb thing. Going to a party, we left Shannon on the front porch to protect the house. When we came back she had been hit by a car. Another big cry and a big guilt trip. I caused Shannon’s death with my own stupidity.
As I was approaching retirement, I decided to get a highly bred English Shepherd. The internet was now available and I searched until I found a good breeder in Ohio. One snowy, January day, we drove to Ohio and bought “Joy.” She was all black and tan. 
She was fourteen weeks old and had never been handled as a puppy–just caged alongside fourteen other ES’s in a former dairy barn. I also noticed when he let them into a former horse paddock that every dog he had would come to me except Joy’s mother! Anyway, we brought Joy to North Carolina in a snowstorm. I had fenced in the back yard and built her a good insulated house. However, we were gone during the day and she was confined to the back yard and saw every meter reader or repair person as an invader. She was quite aggressive toward strangers. The only man who could ever touch Joy was our son-in-law, because they kept her as a puppy and she never forgot Danny. No stranger could ever pet her. She loved us, our daughters, and children but was scared to death of strange adults. If I held her and they touched her, she would tremble.
After I retired and we built a home on a three acre woodlot, I had a hidden fence installed around the entire three acres so Joy could go with me wherever I was. She did check it though and if a storm had killed it, she would go to the neighbor’s! We were inseparable and except for her lack of social skills, she was a great dog. Joy slept by our bed. Often about 4:00 am, she would come to my side of the bed and simply breathe heavily until I waked up and let her out. When we arose, she would be at the back door and join us for breakfast. One morning she was not there. I walked, rode a bike, and drove slowly up and down every road and street looking for her. I roamed the woods behind our house. No sign.
One day as I was getting a hair cut, a man was telling how a “black dog” came to his deer stand when he was hunting with a bow and arrow. She began barking at him in his deer stand and he said he shot her and hauled her out on his four-wheeler. I found the deer stand about a “football gridiron’s length” into the woods, and left guilt notes on it for days, but the guy never showed up to apologize. Joy had tremendous anxiety, either for not being handled and coddled as a puppy who was fourteen weeks old before I got her, or from genetics inherited from her shy mother. I have since learned that every puppy should be handled every day by human hands. She wasn’t.
I was so saddened and angry that I put my story on the English Shepherd Registry. The woman monitoring it lived in New Hampshire and wrote me that there was a reg
istered eight year old male in Alabama for adoption. I called about Rex [pictured here in his older years.] He had been returned to his original breeder but he and his daddy did not like each other any more! I drove to Atlanta and met the breeder and brought Rex home, complete with his registration papers from the famous “Wheelbarger” line out of Tennessee. Rex ate five Arby’s roast beef sandwiches and “hung out” in the back of my Buick Roadmaster station-wagon. By the time we got to North Carolina, he decided I was a keeper and I certainly decided he was one. When my garage door opened by remote, I paused and awaited that sweet face to emerge as soon as it rose enough for him to get under it and greet me.
Rex was a marvelous dog. He loved everyone! He tolerated our children’s dogs when they came and never snapped at a toddler who pulled his tail. He was “calm, cool, and collected.” Rex was black and tan with deep, rich tan. His hair was glossy black and not kinky. He was a perfect specimen. I used him as a stud for many dogs, one from as far away as Oregon who was flown to Raleigh where Rex and I met her at the airport. He was quite a “woman’s man” and sired many puppies. The only sad time was when Kay Keziah brought her beautiful tri-color who miscarried and was spayed. He was ten before his services were no longer wanted.
Rex aged gracefully. When he could not longer jump into the truck seat, he would climb into the floorboard and then the seat. When he could no longer do that, he would look up to me to help him. One day fell as he came down the stairs and he never went up again. Nearly his fifteenth birthday, Rex began to get confused when he went to the window and could not remember how to “back his way out.” Then he could not balance himself outside to “potty.”
Don Haynes and Rex
One sad day I dug his grave with him lying on a blanket watching me. I built him a white casket out of our former kitchen cabinet tops–3/4th inch plywood covered in beautiful white laminate. I caulked all the joints and screwed them together. Joan lined it with old white curtains. I put it in the truck, lifted him into the seat and cried all the way to the vet. I held all sixty pounds of him in my lap as he was injected and went to sleep. I pressed the lids over his beautiful brown eyes and brought him home. His casket was so heavy that two men had to let it down with ropes into the grave. It was raining and dark when we covered him in the rose garden. A picture of Rex and me sits by my recliner. I miss him every day.
The Australian Shepherd is much like the English Shepherd, but there is no breed in the canine world that equals an English Shepherd in loyalty, brilliance, obedience, adaptability, and enjoyment. I am eighty now, and struggling with my “fever” to get another English Shepherd even though he or she will likely outlive me. Truly, English Shepherds have blessed my life.