"Up and at 'em, boys and girls! Come on, rise and shine, let's go!" 
    Abby opened her eyes groggily. The smell of damp grass drifted into her nostrils, and she sat up, sniffing the air. "Mmm, breakfast," she mumbled to herself.
    "It's a great day to be alive, everybody! Get up!" Jeremiah, the guard dog, announced cheerfully.
    She stood up and shook bits of grass flying out of her thick black wool. Looking around, she saw the shepherdess, Jael, going around the flock and nudging all the sheep, coaxing them to get up. Outside the flock's round stone sleeping shelter, the two shepherds were busily making breakfast for the three of them. Fish again it looked like. Abby crinkled her black nose. She didn't really care for fish. Grass suited her just fine.
    Woof! A loud bark startled her, and she jumped. "Haha! Gotcha Abby! Hehe!" The guard dog, Jeremiah, skittered happily around the flock, making sure everyone was present and accounted for. "C'mon Reuben, old boy, wakey wakey!"
    Reuben was the oldest of the sheep in the flock. He was also extremely grumpy in the morning. "Hrmph. Can't any of you just leave an old sheep to rest in peace?" he muttered.
    Jeremiah licked his face and jumped back from the sheep's biting teeth. "Nope! All right Simeon, Levi,Judah, get up. Morning's here once again!"
    The three sheep got up and stretched, mumbling about the perkiness of Jeremiah this early in the morning. Abby smiled and shook her head. He may not have been smart, but Jeremiah certainly was the life of the flock. She turned to her left and saw her plump best friend, Hope, sleeping on her back again. The pure white sheep's mouth was open, and she was snoring loudly.
    "Hope, wake up. Hope, you're going to drown yourself one of these days," Abby chastised. She got up and nudged her friend's side.
    Hope woke with a start. "AGH!" she cried, flailing desperately. She continued to yell and flail until finally she laid still, her eyes wide.
    "Where…am I?" she whispered. "There's no grass." The terrifying thought of never seeing grass again came to her mind. She shuddered and began to flail again.
    Abby pushed her friend's side until she rolled over. "There. Hope, you fell asleep on your back again."
    Hope scrambled to her hooves. "Oh! Oh, well, thank goodness you were here Abby! I could have died in that no-grass world!" She looked down and immediately began holding a conversation with a ladybug that crossed her path.
    "Okay, everybody, let's run through today's checklist!" A slate-gray sheep named Dan walked around the flock vivaciously, counting everyone and letting them know what their job was for the day. He did this every day, and everyone usually ignored him. He always failed to realize that he was actually a sheep and not a human. "All right, let's see, let's see, we have Abby, Issy, Hope and Asher! You girls have been graced with the lovely job of making sure everyone gets fed, eats well, doesn't choke on something, you know, motherly type things like that."
    Issy, a large white sheep with dark speckles on her nose, rolled her eyes and turned over sleepily. "Dan we're sheep. Get over it. We ain't gotta make sure nobody gets fed. Way we look, we could all fast for a year and not get rid of all this blubber." Issy was a rather feisty ewe who didn't take trouble from anyone.

(Check out the rest of Chapter One by purchasing your very own autographed copy of "Abby the Sheep.")