"Dexter-HerdingInstinct" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dexter Colin)

The puppy spied a butterfly, and bounced stiff-legged to challenge and chase,
blissfully unaware of her impending fate.

"Besides, sir, she's got no herding touch," the shepherd explained. "Her mother
rounded up the falling leaves, at this age. The rest of her litter couldn't bear
to see chair parted from table, but they must herd it back to its place. This
one -- only wants to chase. No use with sheep. No use to anyone."

I have done with familiars, Corlinn thought stemly. I have no sheep, nor desire
a flock. No work for a dog-- I will not keep a pet.

He had not bred the pup. He had not judged her unfit to live. He had merely been
asked his opinion, and then been ignored. He bore no responsibility -- he had
not sentenced her to death on a superstition, though that sentence had been
passed in his heating. That he could alter it did not mean that he must. He bore
no obligation.

The shepherd snapped his fingers again to call the pup, but she chose to take
her leave of Corlinn first, and gazed up at him with those summer-sky eyes, her
ears lowered with delight even though he had not acknowledged her, her tail
thrashing fiercely, making a breeze.

He cursed himself for every sort of fool, but Corlinn kept her, and kept the
name the shepherd's wife had given her: Mai.

Mai might have been enchanted, by the way she grew. Corlinn, who saw her each
and every day, took no especial note of the continual small changes -- till he
realized that when she reared up and put her generally muddy paws on his
shoulders, she could very nearly look him in the eye -- and he was by no means a
stocky man. Any height Mai might have lacked was quite made up by the length of
her muzzle-- it put her tongue in easy reach of every part of his face, however
he twisted to avoid its caress.

When he could hold her at sufficient length to get a proper look at her,
Corlinn's eyes beheld a body like a blooded horse's -- long and slender, on very
long legs. Her coat, neither long nor short, was a pleasant honey-brown color,
tipped with black, pied with white irregularly on her legs, throat, chest, and a
stripe down the middle of her face. The tip of her ever-waving tail looked as if
it had been dipped in a paint-pot. One large ear stayed mostly erect, whilst the
other often flew gaily off to one side, and both flicked to follow every sound,
missing nothing. Mai looked nothing like a mountain sheepdog. She was, in every
part, as exotic as her eyes.

Mai was fond of racing about the cottage in an excess of high spirits, as if
fiends were on her track, her back humped and all of her paws briefly occupying
the selfsame spot, sliding wildly on the polished dirt as she turned. Her speed
dazzled as much as it distressed -- Corlinn was often not in time to rescue some
bottle or pot from disaster because he could not imagine it even remotely to be
in danger. He thought to banish the creature from the cottage -- a dog should be
kenneled outside anyway. Mai howled till he did not know which of them he pitied