Donald McCaig

“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.”

“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.”

“You have to train a dog to think.”

“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.”

“You'll want to read books - novels, because ladies are frivolous; poetry because ladies are sentimental; and sermons, because we are pious. If you must read essays, Mr. Emerson might be best. Your gentleman may have a nodding acquaintance with his works.”

“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.”

“Believe in your work.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“I'm a workaday writer.”

“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.”

“Driving alone, you can make 800 miles a day.”

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

“The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force.”