I repeat, the shepherd doesn’t beat the sheep. He may push them.
“I repeat, the shepherd doesn’t beat the sheep. He may push them.”
I repeat, you don’t know squat about herding sheep! You use as much force as is needed and no more. Sometimes that is a LOT of force. I’m not talking about a 30 sheep flock that lives full time in a pasture but range flocks of 1-3,000 sheep.
The rancher/shepherds don’t ENJOY beating the sheep, or having the dogs get rough with them, but you cannot get the job done without sometimes using a lot of force.
It is ultimately for the good of the sheep. If a sheep wanders in the mountains of the western USA, it usually dies. I went with a friend who spent a couple of hours tracking down and bringing back a ewe - a ewe missing an ear, which made her luckier than the other ewe she ran off with. The surviving ewe did her best to escape. We finally got her, managed to knock her down and then tie her legs and we dragged the bloody ewe back to the truck and threw her in. Still tied up. She stayed tied up until we got her back to the flock.
Nothing “gentle” about it. We were both bruised and exhausted. The ewe probably hated us. But we got her back to the flock. Alive, unlike her companion.
You are describing sheep you haven’t met.