Sheepdogs.

Sheepdogs protect the sheep from wolves.

They are hated by the wolves for protecting their prey.  They are also usually hated by the sheep.

They are hated by the sheep because the serve as a reminder that there are wolves that they need to be protected from.

This intrusion of reality is both tiresome and annoying…. until the sheepdog is needed… then they are loved.

Col. Grossman once said that in the aftermath of 911 there were two types of people in America.  Some…. most… looked at the images of the planes slamming into the towers and the Pentagon and said a silent prayer to themselves… “Thank God I was not on those flights”.

Others… a small handful got angry and said to themselves.. “God, I wish I had been on one of those planes… I might have been able to do something.”

That is not bravado… it is a mentality.

We saw an example of this during this past week.

(If you have arrived here from our newsletter, continue reading here:)

Anthony Sadler, Spencer Stone, and Alek Skarlatos were doing what young men from America often do… they were traveling by train in Europe.…France specifically.

Things were going along just fine when an alleged Jihadist decided that the train they were riding on would make a perfect soft target.

When the Jihadist went operational, so did they.

Spencer Stone literally was the first to go into harms way and took the brunt of the Jihadists counter attack.  The fanatic was also armed with a knife in addition to the AK-47 and slashed at Spencer leaving him seriously injured.

His response was to fight harder.

Monday I was at Pala range doing a little live fire work with Sandy and our daughter Chaney.  While we were loading our pistols a woman screamed behind us.  I looked back and saw her cowering in fear.   She was being “terrorized” by a garden snake that had coiled up by her car door.  Now, snakes… reptiles in general… don’t bother me at all.  (Insects… well… that is a different story.)

I was frankly more concerned for the snakes welfare than the woman’s.  With no tools around to secure the offending reptile I reached down and grabbed the snake as close to the head as possible.

Terrified, it struggled and wormed its way loose enough in my hand that it was able to open its tiny month and bite me on the hand.

Yeah… it hurt.

The emotion that I felt was not anger… rather respect.

This reptile… an animal 100 times smaller than me… was not going to take this offense lying down.  Flight was not an option in my grasp, so it chose fight… and with virtually no chance of success available to it, it fought with all it had worth.

Spencer Stone, and those other brave Americans on that French train fought with all they had worth too.  Unarmed, except with their righteous indignation that someone would attempt to victimize them as well as all of the innocent people on the train they launched themselves into the fray.

Stories have been circulating that the French employees of the train fled in fear into their crews quarters leaving their passengers to fend for themselves.

Sheep ran from the wolf.

Sheepdogs… American Sheepdogs… ran in to protect the sheep.

As they have always done… as they will always do… with little care or concern for their own safety.

We drill and practice to become masters of skill at arms… this must by its very nature be a holistic endeavor.  We must train our minds and our mentality to combat the evil that will launch upon us with as much vigor as we practice our weapon-craft.

Well done heroes.

Well done.