Donald McCaig Quotes

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Donald McCaig

Profession : Novelist

Birth : January 1, 1940

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

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig

I'm out of the terse Hemingway school.

Donald McCaig

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

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig

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

Donald McCaig

I do not believe you can work with animals - certainly you cannot train them - without deciding that if humans have souls, dogs do, too.

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig

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

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig

You have to train a dog to think.

Donald McCaig

I'm a workaday writer.

Donald McCaig

I'd rather talk about dogs than about me.

Donald McCaig

Rhett Butler is very mysterious. He disappears, he reappears, God knows where he goes. We know nothing about his family to speak of.

Donald McCaig

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

Donald McCaig

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

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig

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

Donald McCaig

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.

Donald McCaig