A Sheepdog Named Oscar: Love and Companionship in Rural Ireland

by Dara Waldron

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Oscar, a sheepdog abandoned on the hills of Ireland, forms an unexpected bond with a grieving writer who seeks to understand him. Speckled with lush imagery, this story is a powerful reflection on loss, healing and finding connection in a furry companion.

Grieving his father’s sudden passing, a film scholar and father of two boys finds solace in the picturesque idyll of Ireland's East Clare region, where he discovers and adopts an enigmatic border collie from an abandoned farm.

What is the essence of a sheepdog? As much a part of Ireland’s traditional and rural life as the countryside itself, working animals are known to be incredibly smart, loyal, with distinct personalities. Dara Waldron’s memoir about the wandering border collie he adopted the year after his father died is both an animal rescue story and a deep reflection on place, with a happy ending. To make a family pet of Oscar, Waldron enacts the daily ritual of walking the rugged hills and rivers of Ireland's woodlands in its intemperate weather—rain, sleet, and snow. Oscar’s instinct, as a sheepdog, is to run away and return to his handler. Testing the limits of Waldron’s tolerance and trying his fragile trust, days with Oscar are defined by the author's attempts to process his grief. Slowly it seeps into his consciousness: Oscar is asking him to understand a creature who lives for another, who will always return. In lyrical description of Ireland's mystical landscape, along with meditations on art, philosophy, and animal rights, this exquisitely wrought memoir about one man and his dog experiencing a symbiotic calling foregrounds the healing terrain of nature, and the true purpose and breadth of life.

Illustrated throughout with black and white photo stills in a cinema verité style.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954600317
Publisher:	DoppelHouse Press
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	27 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Dara Waldron is a film scholar and author of two monographs and multiple articles in international film journals and magazines. His 2018 book New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics and Documentary Theory is a standard reference for documentary filmmaking courses across the globe. He teaches Critical and Contextual studies at Limerick School of Art and Design and has been a visiting Professor at Aalto University in Helsinki, LUCA School of Arts in Brussels, and the Ethnography Lab at University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2023 he published a study of sheepherding traditions that formed the background for A Sheepdog Named Oscar, his first memoir. Born in Manchester and raised in Ireland, he currently lives on the border between County Limerick and Tipperary in Ireland’s Midwest, close to the gates of well-known Glenstal Abbey and its school, which feature prominently in his memoir.

Table of Contents

I. The Rescue Act
II. Into the Wind
III. From Another World

Editorial Reviews

"A beautiful, vulnerable, polymathic book that traverses art and animal; the rescue and recovery of Oscar and author; and the belonging of each to the other in their own particular way." —Jack Anderson, Irish Examiner

"Freely traveling between academic and rural knowledge, Dara Waldron explores the fluid divide between the animal and human world. A Sheepdog Named Oscar also makes you realize how important landscape and weather are to our thinking. His moving book in essence is about responsibility and what it means for humans 'to take care'." —Peter Delpeut

"Set against the landscapes of west Limerick and east Clare, through local walking trails and moments of quiet reflection, Waldron shares a moving account of loss and recovery that resonates with emotional honesty."—Limerick Leader

"Since my sister-in-law works her border collies tending sheep on Strang Ranch [frequent host of the US Border Collie Handlers Association Sheepdog Finals] in Carbondale, Colorado, where I’ve spent many summers, I’m familiar with the eccentricities of that breed. Dara Waldron, though, enlarged my understanding of the border collie-human relationship through the unique lens he offers on one unusual partnership. Braiding grief, groundedness, and the generosity of the more than human world, Dara Waldron’s writing gently tugs us into the place and spirit at the heart of his experience, making this much more than a dog story. —Judy Strang, executive director, Pedlar River Institute’s Sourwood Forest Artist Residency program, Amherst County, VA

"What wins one's heart is not just the almost indecently elegant writing, writing that really does justify the descriptor "Proustian," but Dara Waldron is right on time with this deeply personal memoir that explores extra-human sentience as part of a relationship cemented through grief, growth, and regeneration." —Aryan Kaganof

"This lovely book gives great insight into the history and inner lives of the working sheepdog in Ireland. It charts the challenges that they face as they provide the companionship and loyalty that truly earns them the title of man's best friend. Unfortunately, humans frequently fail to reach the level of a dog's best friend, and these beautiful dogs are often misunderstood and let down by the humans they worship. As a rescue based in Connemara, where up to 70% of our intake is a Border Collie, Sheepdog, or crossbreed of them, we see just how often these beautiful dogs are abandoned, discarded and left to their fate, redundant and surplus to requirements. However, we also see just how many people like Dara step up to support these incredible creatures and offer them the life, love and security that they deserve. —Marina Fiddler, Co-founder of MADRA Dog Rescue, Galway, Ireland

From the Publisher