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Texto reemplazado: «<sup>th</sup> century» por «th century»
This chapter's title refers to the "shepherd's dog" and not to the “sheepdog” in order to consider it in greater scope. We take shepherd’s dog to mean any working dog regardless of whether its owner is a shepherd or herdsman, while the concept of sheepdog would have a more restrictive meaning as it refers to the breed or breeds of dogs used to herd and look after flocks of sheep.
The shepherds themselves protected and drove the sheep in the past until they resorted to the help of dogs. They initially began to use them as a means to protect the flocks of sheep from dangerous animals, mainly wolves. The dogs therefore had to be strong and ferocious, such as mastiffs, capable of dealing with the attacks. They wore a collar with sharp iron spikes to protect them. As wolves began to be driven out by humans in the early 20<sup>th</sup> 20th century, mastiffs and other catch dogs gradually became less useful. This meant a drop in numbers and their progressive replacement by smaller dogs with a new role. The latter, now known as sheepdogs, are mainly used to drive and herd the flock and are commonplace nowadays. In some shepherding areas, their introduction replaced the young shepherd boys whose work was more efficiently carried out by those dogs.
In the 1990s, wolves reappeared in some shepherding areas where they had not been seen for decades and the mastiff was reintroduced to defend the flocks.