Good looking dog BP. I like labs but my wife had a couple bad experiences with them when she was a kid and will never have one. I have Kirby, the dog in my avatar. Need a different picture of him though. Kirby is an old english sheepdog, or at least mostly. I suspect he's got something else in him. Doesn't matter though. Kirby doesn't have sheep so has taken on the kids as his flock. He will sit in the backyard while they're playing and watch the road to make sure nothing is coming for them.
Funny story - the farrier for my wife's horse has a little jack russell that goes everywhere with him. Great little dog and my 3 year old daughter loves it. Earlier this spring he stopped out and the kids were playing with the dog. My daughter was laughing and let out a high pitched squeal. Kirby took it as her being in trouble and came flying over and put his head into the jack russell and knocked him about 10 feet. Kirby then found my son and chased him over by my daughter and started circling around them until they were side by side and then just kept circling them to keep them together. Whenever the jack russell would try to come back to play with my daughter Kirby would just knock him over again until he eventually gave up and went somewhere else. I was so proud of that dog.

Sorry to steal your thread. Just wanted to share. You can have your thread back now.