The Sheepdog Who Wouldn't Work

Bran was born on a small farm in the hills of north Wales, where every dog for a hundred years had worked with sheep. His mother was a champion. His father could move two hundred sheep across a field with one look. Everyone expected Bran to be the same.

But Bran was different. When the farmer, Mr. Hughes, took him out to the fields for the first time, the puppy didn't look at the sheep at all. He ran after a butterfly. The next day, he lay down in the grass and watched the clouds. The sheep walked past him, and he didn't move.

"He'll learn," Mr. Hughes used to say. Every morning he would whistle, and the older dogs would run to the sheep, and Bran would run in the opposite direction, usually toward the stream, where he liked to lie in the cold water. By the end of the summer, Mr. Hughes had stopped whistling at him. "That dog will never work," he said. "He's lazy."

His daughter Megan didn't agree. She was fourteen, and she used to spend her afternoons with Bran because the other dogs were always busy. She noticed things. Bran wasn't lazy; he was curious. He didn't chase sheep, but he would follow a smell for an hour without stopping, with his nose to the ground and his tail in the air.

One evening in spring, a lamb went missing. It was cold and getting dark, and the mother sheep was calling and calling. Mr. Hughes and the older dogs searched the fields for two hours and found nothing. Megan took Bran to the place where the sheep had last been seen and said, "Find it."

Bran put his nose down and walked. He crossed the stream, went through a gap in the wall and stopped at an old drain under the road. Inside, the lamb was stuck in the mud, too tired to cry. Megan pulled it out and carried it home under her coat.

After that night, everything changed. Mr. Hughes still used the other dogs for herding, but whenever an animal was lost, he would call Bran. Over the years, Bran found dozens of lambs, two calves and, once, a neighbor's goat that had walked five miles to the next village.

He never did learn to herd sheep. He would still chase butterflies when nobody needed him. But nobody on the farm ever called him lazy again.