Spaniels In The Field Article, Winter 1998

I came across this old article by Keith Erlandson the other day. The memories came flooding back to the fall of 1997.  I had moved from Virginia to Los Angeles the year before. Cocker trials were still in their infancy, year four.  Los Angeles is perhaps not as conducive to spaniel training as rural Virginia, but if you have a passion for the job and a little imagination, a well bred spaniel can be trained to the highest level almost anywhere.   Many of the best dogs in the world have been trained out of housing projects with not much more than a bag full of tennis balls and a little moxie.  Our friend Tony Roetteger wrote a good book about training dogs in the suburbs.
When I saw that Keith Erlandson would be judging the North Dakota trial, even though it meant an eighteen hundred mile one way trip from Los Angeles, there was no way I would have missed it.  Keith wouldn’t have been able to pick me out of a crowd of two, but I had read everything he’d written on spaniel training as a teenager growing up in England.  He had a great story telling ability, weaving training advice into elegant prose.  Also, and this was really important to me, he backed up his rhetoric with incredible results, winning seven National Championships, three with the cocker bitch, Speckle of Ardoon, who won the events  consecutively.
Perhaps his greatest contribution was through his breeding.  He bred the 1964 and 1965 double US Open Springer National winner, Gwibernant Ganol, owned by John Pirie Jr. and handled by the great American trainer David Lorenz.  He followed this breeding up in 1967 and 1968 with double US National Amateur winner, NAC Gwibernant Gefni, owned by John Riepenhoft, MD.  You don’t often see two back to back, double National Championship winners!  He bred ; Hales Smut, who put his stamp on the springer spaniel, internationally. also breeding Badgercourt Susan,, mother of the great Badgercourt Druid.  And, anyone with even a modicum of interest in modern day cockers cannot fail to recognize the contributions stemming from the pairing of FTCH Rue of Migdale and FTCH Gwibernant Snake.  These are just a handful of examples of Keith’s influence in modern day spaniels.
Because of that North Dakota Cocker trial, I formed a friendship with Keith that lasted until his untimely death.  He really was a renaissance man having profound interests in almost everything as diverse as native cultures to genetically manufactured crops, a subject that he was passionate enough about to lobby his Mps (Member of Parliament) right up until his death.  While Keith could be contentious, he was always thought provoking.
A number of revisionists came out of the woodwork quoting Keith’s tastes regarding cocker spaniels as soon as the great man was conveniently dead. I am sure where ever he currently resides he gets a good chuckle out of this.  Also, one hears a lot of nonsense these days on how much better the present era cockers are as compared to those back in the day.  Many modern age participants believe the breeds’ meteoric rise happened to coincide with the day they personally became involved.  Overall the dogs are certainly softer and easier to train today, but better?  The real stallions of the breed that Keith alludes to in his article, Mark Rose’s Rocky and Ernie Hasse’s Rocky, are few and far between now.
In the mid nineties I won a trial with Ernie’s Flathome Accord.  Ernie’s back went out the morning of the trial, so I ran him for Ernie.  I never even so much as said “hup” to the dog before.  But, Rocky was a thrill to handle, a real powerhouse.   I am sure he wasn’t the most precise dog on the day, but he was the best.  There usually is a difference between precision dogs and powerful bird finders.   But, we do have better handlers now, not better dogs.
At the 2011 Cocker National Championship, Sue Wilson did a fabulous job with her young cocker Quinn in winning it under the expert judging combination of Mike Wallace and Ernie Hasse.   When I read Keith’s 1997 article it made me smile.  Out of the four dogs that placed under him in North Dakota, three of them, FC Griffins Pride Rocky “Rocky”, FC Warrener’s Blackbird “Cinders” and FC Warrener’s Mistle Thrush “Porter”, are Quinn’s Great Grandparents.  The fourth dog mentioned in the article, FC Ruby Rubster Warrener “Ruby”, was a littermate to Rocky.  And NFC/FC Darag Caol Shraid Marshen, “Freckles” was another littermate who went on to win the Cocker National in 2000 and take a second 1998 is another great grand parent of Quinn. In my opinion, the very best of yesterday flows through to the very best of today.