Don't Give Up the Sheep

One sheepdog punches in on a time clock while the other punches out.. Once there, they proceed to protect the sheep from our friend Wile E. Coyote. It's a lot of the usual stuff except that it's treated as a business. The Coyote is, of course, thwarted all along (no spoilers...just is). The interesting thing is that these guys have a job and a time schedule. Clever idea.

Ralph the Sheepdog punches in the work clock and takes over guard duty over a flock of sheep. In comes a wolf to scope out the potential buffet. First, he tries to trick Ralph by setting the work clock ahead. This keeps going and going until Ralph truly finishes his shift and is replaced by another sheepdog.

This is the first sheepdog and wolf short. The names are not set yet. What it absolutely gets right is the punch clock. That is the biggest and most important aspect of this franchise. It taps into the postwar workers who have to punch a clock everyday. There are later improvements, but this sets up the formula.

In the first pairing of Sam Sheepdog (here named Ralph) and Ralph Wolf (here anonymous), the latter constantly tries to snatch the sheep but the former always foils him, even when not too wise to the wolf's plans. I will say that I sort of predicted what would happen in the scene where they kept chopping the tree and cliff, but the truth is that nothing can weaken a cartoon like this. "Don't Give Up the Sheep" is a formidable part of cartoon history (only Chuck Jones could create a cartoon where a sheepdog works punch-clock shifts). Still, a later cartoon where they both punched the clock made the idea a little neater, what with how it raised the stakes.

Chuck Jones, in addition to both working with solidly established stars such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and doing one-shot cartoons like Martian Through Georgia, did some thematic groupings of short using continuing characters in a small number of cartoons. Ralph and Sam, a sheepdog and wolf, were one of these. The series is one of the better ones as far as I'm concerned. The concept of protector versus predator as a 9 to 5 job just amuses me no end. This particular short isn't the best of the lot (there were seven all told and I believe this was the first of them) but all of them are quite fun and are well worth watching. Recommended.

The sheep dogs are going and coming to work, mainly Sam Sheepdog (named "Ralph" here) and his partner, Fred, who has the other shift that we don't see. They punch a time clock on a tree. Ralph also has his lunch box and sandwich: two slices of bread with a bone in the middle.

Meanwhile, Wile E. Coyote (not named that, but that's who we know him as) lurks nearby seeing nice juicy slabs of meat every time he looks at a sheep.

The story is basically about the dog protecting the sheep from the wolf. The funny bits come from the lengths the wolf goes to, to get his meal for the day, and how he's constantly thwarted. In fact, some of these scenes are hilarious and very clever.

All of these things make this an outstanding animated short, one of the best of its time.