Don't Give Up The Sheep

Don't Give Up The Sheep is a 1953 Animal Cartoons short directed by Chuck Jones.

Title

The title is a play on "don't give up the ship."

Plot

Ralph Wolf is trying to steal the sheep which Sammy Sheepdog is guarding

Ralph's first plan is to trick Sammy into going home early, by turning the time on the punch clock forward and setting the whistle off. Sammy is tricked into thinking that the whistle indicated lunch time, followed by quitting time, and so he punches out and prepares to head home. However, he quickly notices the clock on a church steeple chiming nine o'clock and hurries back to see Ralph carrying a large pile of sheep. Sammy Sheepdog suddenly appears behind a tree and breaks a tree branch over Ralph's head, driving Ralph into the ground.

Ralph's second attempt is disguising himself as a bush. After stealing a sheep and starting to run away, he runs past Sammy, who himself is disguised as a tree and starts to follow Ralph. Sammy hits Ralph on the head with a branch, leaving Ralph very confused and with a large lump on his head. After attempting to run further, this occurs once more, and Ralph is left with two lumps on his head. Ralph then gives up and carries the sheep back to the field as Sammy taps his foot, disguised as a tree root.

For Ralph's third attempt, he reads a book about Greek myths which explains that Pan would "lull shepherds to sleep with the music of his pipes and then steal the sheep." Disguising himself as Pan, Ralph attempts to lull Sammy to sleep with a flute, but Sammy punches Ralph in the face and Ralph stumbles away and continues to play his song, out of tune.

Ralph's fourth attempt involves tunneling under the field and pulling each sheep down through very small holes. This is successful, until Ralph pulls Sammy underground and gets punched in the face. Ralph returns Sammy and all the sheep, then refills his tunnel.

In Ralph's next attempt, he places an ACME product behind Sammy, labelled "One Acme wild-cat - Handle with care". Ralph carefully opens the box with a rope from a distance behind another hill, but the wildcat runs in circles towards Ralph, maims him and scratches him and flees, leaving him dazed with part of his fur torn away.

Ralph's sixth attempt is to swing on a rope over the field and snatch a sheep. Unfortunately, he snatches Sammy out of the flock. After realizing this, he leaves Sammy at the bottom of the rope and climbs to the branch that the rope is tied to and saws the end of the branch off. After sending Sammy crashing to the ground, Sammy appears on further down the branch and saws it off at that point, sending Ralph falling. After Ralph hits the ground, he appears at the start of the branch. This gag continues until Sammy is on the end of a cliff and Ralph uses a pickaxe to detach the edge of the cliff and send Sammy falling. The cartoon then disobeys gravity and leaves Sammy's piece of earth floating in the air, as the rest of the cliff which Ralph is standing on falls down. Sammy shrugs this off.

Ralph's next, seventh, and final attempt is to snatch a sheep which is drinking from edge of a lake. He uses a hollow rush to swim through the lake unnoticed. Sammy notices the rush sticking out of the water and drops a stick of dynamite into it. Blasted by a small underwater explosion like "tsunami", Ralph surfaces and then sinks like a ship.

Finally, Sammy walks toward the punch clock as Fred Sheepdog punches in and greets him "Hello Ralph." Sammy hits him over the head with a plank, and the viewers see the rubber mask pop off from a head bump underneath, revealing him to be Ralph in disguise. As Sammy begins spanking Ralph with the club, the real Fred Sheepdog shows up, punches in and says "Hello Ralph," and Sam responds "Hello Fred," and takes over for Sam, who leaves since it is the end of his shift, continuing to spank Ralph.

Notes

This is the first short featuring Sammy Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf and is the prototype for their next six episodes.