There are people in the world who are so disconnected from the natural world and from the real world of animals that they believe it is cruel for working animals to work. For me, human beings are forever in debt to working animals, they helped us build the world, guard our homes, manage our farms, build our buildings, transport us, care for our sheep, carry the goods and food and bricks and wood we have always needed and used.

It was a bitter cold morning at the farm, we took the sheep out to the far pasture to find the donkeys, who were out in the bushes behind the tree line, eating shrubs and twigs, clearing out the pasture. The wind was shrieking down the hill, my feet and fingers stung with the cold. Red stayed behind the sheep, moving them in the ancient way of herding dogs, in the crouch of the border collie.

I am not a farmer, but a writer with a farm, I am conscious every day of what a dog like this must have meant to a real farmer looking for grass for his flock, needing to keep them safe and bring them home.