DONALD MCCAIG

I'm out of the terse Hemingway school.

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.

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

You have to train a dog to think.

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.

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

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

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'd rather talk about dogs than about me.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Civil War has a tremendous moral and emotional force.

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

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

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.

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

Driving alone, you can make 800 miles a day.

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

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

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.

Believe in your work.