Reflections from the Dog House

THE SUBTITLE OF THIS BOOK OUGHT TO BE 'THE LEGACY OF BUP and Thane' because, quite simply, if it hadn't been for those two German Shepherd dogs, this book would never, could never, have been written. First, because Bup pulled my adoptive mother out of deep, cold, fast moving irrigation water in the canal when she was three, thus saving her from drowning, and second because Thane, at the age of seven months, fought a house-breaker down a flight of stairs and drove him away one bitter January day when I was living far out and away from town, all alone on a large cattle ranch with no other help within call. Without that big pup, I seriously doubt I would have survived that attack intact, if I had survived it at all. In the first case, I would have been adopted by someone else and might never have grown up with German Shepherd dogs, and in the second case I probably wouldn't have survived at all.
Both Bup and Thane were both heavily endowed with the quality which we today call, quite erroneously, actually, 'genetic obedience'. (It isn't obedience. It's something a whole lot more.) We might as well call it Magic. It is the fairy tale, fantasy aspect of the breed which has enchanted people and drawn them to the German Shepherd dog for over a century in the hope that THEIR dog would have it. Breed pundits of today declare the quality a real fairy tale, a quality all but extinct in the dogs. Maybe it is.