Ranch Dog Quotes

That's it, he rasped. Hump me. Are you a dog? Are you a dog in heat? You my dog? He slapped me again. Speak, puppy.

Suddenly,I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky...at his college roommate's ranch, perhaps...where rhey hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me.

That was the end of Grogan... the man who killed my father, raped and murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog, and stole my Bible!

When Rin Tin Tin first became famous, most dogs in the world would not sit down when asked. Dogs performed duties: they herded sheep, they barked at strangers, they did what dogs do naturally, and people learned to interpret and make use of how they behaved. The idea of a dog's being obedient for the sake of good manners was unheard of. When dogs lived outside, as they usually did on farms and ranches, the etiquette required of them was minimal. But by the 1930s, Americans were leaving farms and moving into urban and suburban areas, bringing dogs along as pets and sharing living quarters with them. At the time, the principles of behavior were still mostly a mystery -- Ivan Pavlov's explication of conditional reflexes, on which much training is based, wasn't even published in an English translation until 1927. If dogs needed to be taught how to behave, people had to be trained to train their dogs. The idea that an ordinary person -- not a dog professional -- could train his own pet was a new idea, which is partly why Rin Tin Tin's performances in movies and onstage were looked upon as extraordinary.

The sheepdog trial is a contest of farm and ranch dogs doing the same work they do every day at home. It's a simple test: dog runs out, gathers sheep, and fetches them to his shepherd. Dog drives the sheep through obstacles. Then dog and man sort the sheep and pen them. Any halfway decent sheepdog can do it but some are better than others

FOR THE VOICELESS by El Niño Salvaje I speak for the ones who cannot speak, for the voiceless. I raise my voice and wave my arms and shout for the ones you do not see, perhaps cannot see, for the invisible. For the poor, the powerless, the disenfranchised; for the victims of this so-called “war on drugs,” for the eighty thousand murdered by the narcos, by the police, by the military, by the government, by the purchasers of drugs and the sellers of guns, by the investors in gleaming towers who have parlayed their “new money” into hotels, resorts, shopping malls, and suburban developments. I speak for the tortured, burned, and flayed by the narcos, beaten and raped by the soldiers, electrocuted and half-drowned by the police. I speak for the orphans, twenty thousand of them, for the children who have lost both or one parent, whose lives will never be the same. I speak for the dead children, shot in crossfires, murdered alongside their parents, ripped from their mothers’ wombs. I speak for the people enslaved, forced to labor on the narcos’ ranches, forced to fight. I speak for the mass of others ground down by an economic system that cares more for profit than for people. I speak for the people who tried to tell the truth, who tried to tell the story, who tried to show you what you have been doing and what you have done. But you silenced them and blinded them so that they could not tell you, could not show you. I speak for them, but I speak to you—the rich, the powerful, the politicians, the comandantes, the generals. I speak to Los Pinos and the Chamber of Deputies, I speak to the White House and Congress, I speak to AFI and the DEA, I speak to the bankers, and the ranchers and the oil barons and the capitalists and the narco drug lords and I say— You are the same. You are all the cartel. And you are guilty. You are guilty of murder, you are guilty of torture, you are guilty of rape, of kidnapping, of slavery, of oppression, but mostly I say that you are guilty of indifference. You do not see the people that you grind under your heel. You do not see their pain, you do not hear their cries, they are voiceless and invisible to you and they are the victims of this war that you perpetuate to keep yourselves above them. This is not a war on drugs. This is a war on the poor. This is a war on the poor and the powerless, the voiceless and the invisible, that you would just as soon be swept from your streets like the trash that blows around your ankles and soils your shoes. Congratulations. You’ve done it. You’ve performed a cleansing. A limpieza. The country is safe now for your shopping malls and suburban tracts, the invisible are safely out of sight, the voiceless silent as they should be. I speak these last words, and now you will kill me for it. I only ask that you bury me in the fosa común—the common grave—with the faceless and the nameless, without a headstone. I would rather be with them than you. And I am voiceless now, and invisible.

Tell me you showered before you came over,” Bird said. “Most definitely,” Brandon said, picking up a pickle and dipping it into the Ranch dressing. “You could come work for me,” Bird said. Three years ago, Bird had started her own business: Scoopin’ Poopin’. She’d gone to dog owners in her neighborhood and offered to clean out their backyards each week for a monthly fee. Once she’d turned sixteen and could drive, she’d expanded her business beyond the neighborhood. “It’s still shoveling--” Brandon began. “It’s not the same,” Bird said. “I do it really early in the morning before it gets hot, and I have a long-handled scooper.” Brandon grinned. “Thanks, babe, but we’ll find something.

The little car was soon free of the city, for the smear of suburbia that had once lain along the western highways for miles was gone. During the Plague Years of the eighties, when in some areas not one person in twenty remained alive, the suburbs were not a good place to be. Miles from the supermart, no gas for the car, and all the split-level ranch homes around you full of the dead. No help, no food. Packs of huge status-symbol dogs—Afghans, Alsatians, Great Danes—running wild across the lawns ragged with burdock and plantain. Picture window cracked. Who’ll come and mend the broken glass? People had huddled back into the old core of the city; and once the suburbs had been looted, they burned. Like Moscow in 1812, acts of God or vandalism: they were no longer wanted, and they burned. Fireweed, from which bees make the finest honey of all, grew acre after acre over the sites of Kensington Homes West, Sylvan Oak Manor Estates, and Valley Vista Park.

Motionless, she looked up, one eye open, searching. It was too dark to see him. She seemed so small, a misplaced doll, as she swayed, squinting. “Little Dog,” she said in a whisper-shout. “You up there, Little Dog?” She craned her neck, then looked away, at the freeway in the distance. “Your mom. She not normal okay? She pain. She hurt. But she want you, she need us.” She stirred in place. The leaves crackled. “She love you, Little Dog. But she sick. Sick like me. In the brains.” She examined her hand, as if to make sure it still existed, then dropped it. The boy, hearing this, pressed his lips to the cold bark to keep from crying. She pain, the boy thought, mulling over her words. How can anyone be a feeling? The boy said nothing. “You don’t need to be scared, Little Dog. You smarter than me.” Something crinkled. In her arms, held like a baby, was a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. In her other hand was a Poland Spring water bottle filled with warm jasmine tea. She kept muttering to herself, “You don’t need to be scared. No need.

As a child I had grown up around individual dogs that belonged to various members of an extended family and friends, as well as around packs of dogs on family's and neighbors' ranches. Growing up in the United States, I had countless encounters with both familiar dogs and strange dogs. Through the many encounters and interactions with many dogs over the course of a lifetime of now 5+ decades, I have learned to read the behavior of dogs quite well, and eventually have come to understand much about dog-psychology, how to behave around them, how to handle them, and how to train them to acceptably behave – all in the most instinctive and natural way possible.

Rory's big labradoodle made a snap judgement that Frankie was everything her life had been missing up until now. She flung herself into the girl's arms, wiggling and whining, a shaggy mass of chocolate-colored enthusiasm. "Mistral likes you, I see." While he, the one who filled the dog's food dish, had gotten nothing but suspicious glances since he arrived two days earlier. "of course you like me" she said, baby-talking into the dog's fur, "I'm extremely likeable." If the dog's expression was any indication, Frankie was about to get nominated for sainthood.... She glanced at him. "Maybe she'd like you more if you weren't so... testosterone-y." "But then you might like me less

Arrange for supplies to be delivered every day. You’ll have to write up a schedule for the men. Have Cookie plan a menu this afternoon.” Frank’s eyes widened. He looked as if someone had just run over his favorite dog. “Boss, you’re not taking Cookie with you.” It was more of a plea than a question. “No one else can cook for shit. What am I supposed to feed them?” “But without Cookie, one of the boys will have to cook for those of us left behind.” “There’s enough stuff frozen to get everyone through a week.” “Ah, jeez.” Frank’s shoulders slumped. “Why’d you have to take Cookie with you?” Zane ignored the question. Frank knew he was stuck on the ranch. With Zane gone, Frank would be in charge. “I’ll have the two-way radios with me. With the new tower in place, you’ll be able to reach me any time.” Frank was still grumbling about losing the ranch cook for a week. “Want to trade?” Zane asked flatly. His foreman pressed his lips together. They both knew taking ten novice riders out on a fake cattle drive through wilderness was nothing short of five kinds of hell. June weather was usually good, but there was always the possibility of a freak snowstorm, a sizable flash flood, spooked cattle, bears, runaway horses, snakebite and saddle sores. Frank slapped him on the back. “You have a fine time out there, boss. The boys and I will keep things running back here.” “Somehow I knew you were going to say that.

It was astonishing, Lara thought, the sheer outpouring of human desire. The need to record, to create, to be acknowledged. Read me read me read me. The queries tsunamied her inbox, twenty to thirty a day. Girl-meets-boy. Poor-kid-gets-rich. Rich-kids-go-bad. Boy-saves-the-world. Boy-writes-a-bestseller-then-gets-writer’s-block-but-lives-in-a-gorgeous-condo-while-his-girlfriend-helps-him-figure-it-out. Girl-meets-girl. Dog dies. First love. First fuck. Bad parents. Bad husbands. Bad habits. War. War. War. Robots. Fairies. Vampires. Dragons. Change centuries. Tell-alls. Tell-nothings. Pride and Prejudice on a ranch, at a mall; swap out the sisters for men, dogs, parakeets. Change countries. Add zombies. Repeat.

In the evening he saddled his horse and rode out west from the house. The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him. He rode where he would always choose to ride, out where the western fork of the old Comanche road coming down out of the Kiowa country to the north passed through the westernmost section of the ranch and you could see the faint trace of it bearing south over the low prairie that lay between the north and middle forks of the Concho River. At the hour he'd always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came down out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only. When the wind was in the north you could hear them, the horses and the breath of the horses and the horses' hooves that were shod in rawhide and the rattle of lances and the constant drag of the travois poles in the sand like the passing of some enormous serpent and the young boys naked on wild horses jaunty as circus riders and hazing wild horses before them and the dogs trotting with their tongues aloll and footslaves following half naked and sorely burdened an above all the low chant of their traveling song which the riders sang as they rode, nation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral waste to darkness bearing lost to all history and all remembrance like a grail the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives.

In the meantime, Marlboro Man was working his fingers to the bone. To prepare for our three-week honeymoon to Australia, he’d rearranged the schedule of many goings-on at the ranch, compressing a normally much longer shipping season into a two-week window. I could sense a difference in his work; his phone calls to me were fewer and farther between, and he was getting up much earlier than he normally did. And at night, when he did call to whisper a sweet “good night” to me before his head hit the pillow, his voice was scratchy, more weary than normal. He was working like a dog. In the midst of all of this, the deadline for our collage assignment loomed. It was Monday evening before our Tuesday get-together with Father Johnson, and I knew neither Marlboro Man nor I had gotten around to our respective collages. There was just too much going on--too many cows, too many wedding decisions, too many cozy movies on Marlboro Man’s tufted leather couch. We had way too much romance to take care of when we were together, and besides that, Father Johnson had explicitly told us we couldn’t work on the collages in each other’s presence. This was fine with me: sitting upright at a table and cutting our magazine photos was the last thing I wanted to do with such a fine specimen of a human. It would have been a criminal misuse of our time together.

Of course, no china--however intricate and inviting--was as seductive as my fiancé, my future husband, who continued to eat me alive with one glance from his icy-blue eyes. Who greeted me not at the door of his house when I arrived almost every night of the week, but at my car. Who welcomed me not with a pat on the arm or even a hug but with an all-enveloping, all-encompassing embrace. Whose good-night kisses began the moment I arrived, not hours later when it was time to go home. We were already playing house, what with my almost daily trips to the ranch and our five o’clock suppers and our lazy movie nights on his thirty-year-old leather couch, the same one his parents had bought when they were a newly married couple. We’d already watched enough movies together to last a lifetime. Giant with James Dean, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Reservoir Dogs, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, All Quiet on the Western Front, and, more than a handful of times, Gone With the Wind. I was continually surprised by the assortment of movies Marlboro Man loved to watch--his taste was surprisingly eclectic--and I loved discovering more and more about him through the VHS collection in his living room. He actually owned The Philadelphia Story. With Marlboro Man, surprises lurked around every corner. We were already a married couple--well, except for the whole “sleepover thing” and the fact that we hadn’t actually gotten hitched yet. We stayed in, like any married couple over the age of sixty, and continued to get to know everything about each other completely outside the realm of parties, dates, and gatherings. All of that was way too far away, anyway--a minimum hour-and-a-half drive to the nearest big city--and besides that, Marlboro Man was a fish out of water in a busy, crowded bar. As for me, I’d been there, done that--a thousand and one times. Going out and panting the town red was unnecessary and completely out of context for the kind of life we’d be building together. This was what we brought each other, I realized. He showed me a slower pace, and permission to be comfortable in the absence of exciting plans on the horizon. I gave him, I realized, something different. Different from the girls he’d dated before--girls who actually knew a thing or two about country life. Different from his mom, who’d also grown up on a ranch. Different from all of his female cousins, who knew how to saddle and ride and who were born with their boots on. As the youngest son in a family of three boys, maybe he looked forward to experiencing life with someone who’d see the country with fresh eyes. Someone who’d appreciate how miraculously countercultural, how strange and set apart it all really is. Someone who couldn’t ride to save her life. Who didn’t know north from south, or east from west. If that defined his criteria for a life partner, I was definitely the woman for the job.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

Watch lay down again, beside Jessie, as if to say, “Well, I don’t care. After all, I’m Jessie’s dog.

Despite the diversity of the constructions that other animals create—the pendulous baskets of oriole nests, the intricate dens of prairie dogs, or the decorated nests of bowerbirds—humans construct the broadest array of dwellings on Earth. Our words for “dwelling” point to this diversity: Palace, hovel, hogan, ranch house, croft. Tipi, chalet, duplex, kraal. Igloo, bungalow, billet, cabin.

And you propose to remain here until everyone is back up and raiding? Is that it?” She grew angry at his condescending manner. “I propose that I remain here and help the sick. You can go wherever you like, but I’d prefer it be back to the ranch so that at least my family won’t worry about my safety.” William stepped closer. “Shouldn’t you have considered that before gallivanting off with a Comanche for parts unknown?” She put her hands on her hips. “Will you take a message back to the ranch?” He shook his head. “I’m staying if you’re staying.” He was only inches away and Hannah couldn’t help but notice the small scar on the right side of his jaw. She found herself wondering why she hadn’t seen it before. What had caused it? It was only an inch or so long and rather faint. Perhaps it had happened when he was young and over the years time had faded the reminder. “Well?” Hannah realized with much embarrassment that she’d been staring at William’s face. Shaking off her thoughts, she turned to walk away. “I will ask Red Dog to take the message.” “And where will you get the paper and pen for such a message?” She glanced over her shoulder and kept walking. “I have a pencil and paper, Mr. Barnett. I’m not the complete idiot you believe me to be.

Consider your stock. Are your sheep or goats fast and nimble, flocking or nonflocking, spooky or accustomed to daily handling? Do you have dairy cattle or ranch cattle? Some herding breeds are suited to working cattle or hogs, while others can adapt to the variety of animals found on a small farm. Turkeys, geese, or ducks pose particular challenges.

The next morning came early at the Circle T Ranch.  The sun had begun its climb over the eastern hills, greeted by the clang of the breakfast bell mixed with the roosters’ crows and barking dogs.  Wade pushed back his blanket and, feeling the early September chill, wished someone had built a fire in the pot-bellied stove a few feet away. Looking half-asleep, Emmett sat up and stared out the window at the barn and corral, wishing he could crawl back under the covers.  He turned from the window, looked at Wade under his covers, and told him it was time to get up. Getting out of bed, he grabbed his pants from a peg on the wall next to his bunk and headed for the outhouse dressed in his faded red underwear. Wade tossed his covers back, greeted by the same chilly morning that greeted Emmett.  He put his feet on the cold wooden floor, stood, took his pants off the peg, and slipped into them.  Pulling his suspenders up, he followed Emmett and the others out back to take his turn. Wade

some people celebrate Mother’s Day for being a ‘dog-mom.’ That’s unstable.

The legs were little more than elongated rectangles and the torso v-shaped, wider at the shoulders than the hips. The head was a simple oval, scratched into the stone without eyes or mouth. There was no neck to speak of. Then came a canine. There was no mistaken it: rear legs, ears, muzzle and teeth and down on all-fours. Maybe it was a wolf, maybe a coyote or a dog. The third was the weird one. It appeared to be neither man nor canine, but some combination of the two. It had the same v-shaped torso, but the ears were definitely canine, the head level at the top and barely protruding above the shoulders. There were no facial features.

they were a sickly imitation of people, but still way too dog-like. Both had their lips drawn back in a half-snarl, half grin with yellow fangs showing. Their eyes reflected a jaundice yellow, the irises dark and beady. The ears were all canine, short and pointed. And there was no escaping that smell, like a raccoon that had been hit by a car, its three-day old carcass hidden by tall weeds but reeking in the summer heat. If you’ve had the experience, you know the smell.

Every door had several large, heavy-duty dead bolts on both the inside and outside. All of the windows were bolted, and at each end of the farmhouse, large metal chains attached to huge steel rings were embedded securely into the wall. The previous owners had apparently chained very large guard dogs on both ends of the house. And they had barred the windows and put dead bolts on both sides of each door. What on earth were they afraid of? Tom wondered.

the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ’coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

If you’ll take my tip, you’ll walk out, yourself. The Trouble-Wagon is backing up to this ranch of yours.

The enclosures were struck by either some very skilled intruders or by what seemed to be a torrent of “poltergeistlike” activity. Persons unknown would routinely open the doors, padlocks would vanish, and the dogs would escape by unknown means.

We’re free to choose how we feel about it, aren’t we?' the old dog said as he sat and watched the children run in the ranch yard. 'There are chains on our collars, but no chains on our spirits. We can still decide to be happy — even tethered to a post.

I—uh—I came across this book and thought you might like it. Since you’re into history, y’know? It’s about the history of Wells Canyon.” I thrust my hand forward, holding out a flimsy paperback. By “came across”, I mean I specifically went to the local tourist information centre and purchased it after the day at the river. I should’ve cracked the spine, dog-eared a few pages… made it look less new. More believable that it’s just been lying around somewhere.

Haley wants her women to stand out. And they’re always fully dressed. Never in lingerie or robes—Haley’s not running some cheap Nevada mustang ranch. She’s been known to costume the women in turtlenecks, in business suits, in basic little black frocks, in gowns. She dresses her women in clothes that the men can imagine removing. And she makes them wait to do that. They have to jump through hoops, even at the White House.

Great, my life is a country song. I’m a widow, living on a ranch, driving a truck, and the long-lost “love of my life” and I are face to face. All I need is a dog. “I

We never let Watch get up on the beds,” said Violet softly. “I always let my dog lie on my bed,” said Aunt Jane. Watch looked first at one and then at the other. “Up!” said Aunt Jane. Watch gave a great jump and landed on the other side of the little lady. He lay down and put his head on his paws. He was not sure that he had done the right thing. He kept looking at Violet. Violet was watching her aunt smile at Watch. She was sure that Watch had done the right thing.

When you get on your sled, and yell hike, what happens?” “The dogs start to run?” “They explode with so much power, you just have to hold on. Love is like that. You don’t have to create it, you just have to open your heart to it and then let it pour out.

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees- willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter's flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them.Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of 'coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.