These days we’ve rationalized the work with the sheep more and more, dividing the responsibility. I just quickly check they’re alive, ideally from a distance.
There’s so many other things that have to be done. Even if it was obviously annoying when they used to escape the whole time, those conflicts bound us together. The constant mucking about with the sheep gave me something to pin my existence to, something living, meaningful. Commercial meat production is meaningless. Lucrative, but meaningless.