Dear Keiva: You must have read both Bible and Iliad more extensively than I did. Of course for many years the dogs would have been principally a defense against predators. We had a Maremma guaranteed to keep predators away. The Border Collies struck me as regarding the sheep as potential food supply that they shared with us. A Border Collie "giving eye" to a sheep is very obviously no friend of the sheep. And I have read that in the UK where they originated, they are routinely destroyed at about age five or six, because they sneak out at night and kill somebody else's sheep. I think James Herriot has a story about this.