Greg Drobny started writing in the early days of “blogging” as a full time contributor to The Rhino Den, an element of the Ranger Up company. Today he is one of the most prolific contributors to The Havok Journal. His piece “The Sheepdog Analogy Is Deeply Flawed” is the focus of our discussion.
The Sheepdog concept was first formed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his book “On Killing”. His theory is that everyone falls into one of three categories; the majority of the population are “sheep”. Those who prey on the general population are “Wolves” and those who protect the general population are “Sheepdogs” – members of our military and first responder communities.
Greg was inspired to study in the fields of history and psychology after reading Grossman’s book while training to be an Army Ranger. In his article he calls the Sheepdog “harmfully simplistic” because people, like life, are dynamic. He cites the examples of the grandmother who dispatched a “wolf” trying to break into her home. He also discusses how people who attempt to don the mantel of “sheepdogs” but are untrained can cause more harm than good.
Greg was inspired to join the Army at 28 years old following the 9/11 attacks. During boot camp he was teased by his fellow soldiers warning him that because of his age he was going to break his hip. Sure enough, 2 days before completing Ranger training that is precisely what happened. He eventually did earn his tan beret as a member of the Ranger training brigade.
Greg was deployed in Iraq as a psychological operations team chief. After leaving the military he spent some time working in politics, a field he says was very similar to his military psy-ops activities.
Greg currently works as the Student Recruitment Manager for Code Platoon. Code Platoon addresses the issue of Veteran unemployment by providing high intensity “boot camp” training in the field of software engineering.
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