At this recent WSSCA National Specialty, I was struck by a few things-one was that I didn't know a lot of the people who were set up around me in the grooming area, and the other was that many of these folks didn't really know me or the rest of the WSS folks and their dogs that were in this breed for the past 30+ years. Many of us 'old timers', can rattle off pedigrees of the dogs that we started with or saw at specialties over the past 30+ years, because it's just part of our collective memory. We knew the progeny of the dogs in Bill Pferd's books, because that's who was around when we got into the breed.  And before there were pedigree databases, we had to record the pedigrees on paper and file them in our brains, so we memorized them when we wrote them out. 

It's important to remember the breeders who are gone now, because as long as we remember them, they and their contributions to our breed continue to live on.  I guess it's like the current interest in 'heirloom' plantings-if you don't remember your roots, you can't really tell how you got where you are now. So, from time to time I'd like to reminisce about some of the WSS folks we've been fortunate to know. I guess you can consider it a history lesson, in a way. It's hard for me to imagine, for example that people never met Maurice and Carol Krohn, and never saw Tydaky's Wildfire. We first met the Krohns at a Penn Treaty KC WSSCA National Specialty show, and I think it was probably in April of 1984, . At that time, Wildfire would have been just a 6 month old puppy. He was sired by Val (Valentijn van Snellestein) who was owned by Adrienne Bancker, so I'm sure the introductions were handled either by A or perhaps Sue Riese, who we had purchased our first show dog from in 1982. Carol was an owner handler, like me, but a far better groomer than I. A year later, at this same show in 1985, Wildfire took WD/BoW I think...as an 18 month old dog. Club historians can probably correct me on this...

From that initial meeting in 1984, Carol and I developed a friendly relationship, and I monitored Wildfire's successful show career. When I was looking for a stud dog for Kismet's second litter in 1988, I called Carol to make breeding arrangements and drove to Lancaster, Wisconsin in mid-April. A few weeks later was the WSSCA National, again at Penn Treaty KC. Kismet was entered since she was early in her pregnancy, and DoDo Hunton Morgans of Kennel Dalati was the judge. Kismet was handled by Joy Quallenberg, who guided her to her second BoS award. In June 1988, the litter was born-it produced two Ch sons and a major pointed daughter for Wildfire and  Kismet. In 1991, the WSSCA National Specialty was held in Madison Wisconsin, and John Phillips judged the breed, with Ria Horter (Val's breeder) in attendance. For BoB, Mr. Phillips selected Ch Tydaky's Wildfire, pictured above with the judge, Carol, Sue Riese and Ria Horter. And for WD/BoW, he selected the Wildfire son, Rysan's Wee Chips Of Wyman. We all reveled in the successful breedings that day, Sue and Adrienne for Carol's win, and Rich and I for Sandy Madden's owner-handled win in the classes with her Kismet son.

We liked the look and temperament of the Tydaky dogs, and Carol became my good friend and mentor in the breed. We continued our relationship after the Kismet breeding and acquired Tydakys Silouette Of Rysan in 1989. Shiner was a lovely and typey girl out of  Wildfire's litter-brother, Ch Tydaky's Fast Freddie. We completed her championship but placed her when her hips didn't clear OFA. In early 1991, we got Rysan's Kirin of Tydaky from Carol. She was a Northey Watney's Red daughter out of a Wildfire daughter, Currie Tydakys Mueller. Since my first show bitch was a Watney daughter, this was an opportunity to continue with dogs we were both familiar with. In 1994, Carol requested the opportunity to lease Kirin to breed her back to Wildfire. I requested a show bitch out of the breeding, and Carol gave me Rysan's Wild Design O'Tydaky in the summer of 1994. Carol kept Faith, Tydakys Wild About You out of the litter, and bred her to Saga's My Wyatt Of Tydaky to produce Tydakys Faiths Promise in 2002. 

Desi was an important bitch for us-she produced 5 champions and was the dam of my Bart-Rysan's Just For Me and his sister Tally- Rysan's Count On Me, and my first owner-handled group placer, Grady-Rysan's Take It For Granite. So while Carol and Maurice are both gone, their impact on our breeding program continues. Bart has sired litters for other breeders, Tally has produced puppies for Diane Edgett, and Grady and I trained in Rally together earning an RA in addition to that group placement. The impact of over 20 years of friendship with Carol and Maurice still lives on in my house, and I'm sorry that they are gone. But, they are remembered every day in my house, and for that we're thankful.

We've all seen the images of the utter destruction in Oklahoma from the direct hit the city of Moore took from a horrendously powerful tornado on Monday afternoon. Tuesday morning I was watching a video clip of an elderly woman who hid in a bathroom with her dog. While the tornado destroyed her house, she lost her hold on the dog and hadn't found it when she emerged from the wreckage. During the interview, the owner was very stoic, reconciling the weather related damage as a part of life in the Midwest. An off-camera person shouted-"Look, it's the dog" and the camera switched to a Mini Schnauzer struggling to emerge from the flattened house. It was at that point the owner, who had just lost everything she owned, started crying when her little dog was found safe and sound. Just goes to show you-we can lose all our material possessions, but the connection with our companion animals is what really matters to us.

Various charitable organizations recognize this human-animal link and strive to assure that pets, who are often de-prioritized, injured or traumatized by the events surrounding disasters, will be cared for adequately until more permanent housing arrangements can be made. The two charities I'm most familiar with are PetSmart Charities and AKC Companion Animal Recovery (CAR) Canine Support and Relief Fund. You can make donations to either fund from their web sites. Go here for PetSmart Charities, and go here for the AKC CAR Canine Support and Relief Fund. 

Donations to PetSmart (either through the website or when you check out at the cash register) support the PetSmart Charities® Emergency Relief Waggin'® Program. This is a fleet of 6 tractor-trailers located at various PetSmart distributions centers throughout the US, mobilized when requests are made by animal control agencies in the impacted area. Disaster or animal rescue sites are supplied with food, crates, equipment, and experienced volunteer staff to set up an emergency animal shelter and coordinate with local shelters to assist in handling the influx of animals. PetSmart Charities has a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, and a lot of information on their website regarding their emergency relief activities. If you donate regularly to PetSmart Charities when you check out, you'll get a year-end statement of your donations for IRS record-keeping. Much easier than saving all the receipts!

The AKC CAR Canine Support and Relief Fund is a 501(c)3 charitable fund that provides resources, funds and other assistance to support not-for-profit K-9 search and rescue organizations and pet-related disaster preparedness and relief efforts. I wasn't able to find it on Charity Navigator, but the AKC Canine Health Fund is there, with a 4-star rating. the CAR fund offers grants to kennel clubs, search and rescue organizations and rescue organizations and provides supplies during natural disasters. It is a worthy charity linked to the not-for-profit Companion Animal Recovery microchip program run by AKC.

Ok, so we all know that in England the WSS are not just bird-dog hunters, they are also allowed to hunt small game, usually hare as the preferred choice. In my neck of the woods there is certainly no dearth of rabbits to go chase after-they scatter whenever we pull the cars up the driveway towards twilight. But, most of them have discovered that a pack of baying Welshies careening out of the house into the yard does not really speak well for their longevity. Instead, they've learned that it's just safer to eat my daylily garden outside the fenced yard. Dagnabit-sometimes I feel like Elmer Fudd trying to catch 'That Wabbit' eating his carrots out of the garden! Really-if I don't take a picture of a daylilly in bloom in the morning, by night there will be no flower, no buds, and half the leaves will be eaten away. We keep spraying with 'critter repellent'  and put down those hot pepper granules, but when the critters are hungry, the heat from the capsicum is just like red pepper flakes on a pizza, I guess.

We packed up and left the show site on Sunday afternoon -  it's truly amazing the junk you accumulate in 4 days at a dog show! We spent the rest of the day de-stressing, relaxing, and letting the dogs run around the yard. We were treated to a wonderful grilled steak dinner by our hosts Marc and Sonja Goold, and Monday morning we started our journey northward. During the trip we saw signs on Rt 77 that indicated Route 81 was closed in the Harrisburg area-I figured a tanker truck accident with roadway damage, since that's what usually causes these types of notices. Sure enough, that turned out to be the case, but it's been resolved and the roadway is now reopened.

Seeing the road closure notices brought back memories of a similar trip I made years ago. In the early 1990's I drove to GA to breed one of my girls, and on the way home there was a fiery tanker truck accident on Route 81 in VA that closed the entire northbound roadway for days. This was so long ago that it was before LCD signs and cell phones-we all just had CB radios to tell us where Smokey was hiding. We didn't have a GPS talking to us on the dashboard-we had to know how to read a map! Well, around northern North Carolina we started hearing CB chatter of huge northbound backups in VA. By the time we were entering VA, the idea of a convoy had developed. When the traffic slowed, and it appeared we were going to be forced off farther up the road, a batch of drivers decided to take the next exit off Rt 81 and go around all the traffic. So, I decided to throw in my lot with them-it beat sitting in traffic for hours, even if I had no idea where we were going. 

These little towns were totally unprepared for the large number of semis in our convoy descending on local roadways. We drove through a batch of small towns whose names I never knew, and proceeded to wind our way up and down the narrow mountain roads until we reached Roanoke. When the local police departments realized what was happening, they started waving us through the traffic lights and holding traffic at intersections so we could all get through and not back up the roadways. Yes, the chatter on the CB was all about that old 'Convoy' song, but it was SO COOL to be in  the midst of all these truckers. They did watch out for us 'little ladies' driving minivans, and made sure that we were OK while we were watching brakes smoking on the trucks ahead of us going down the mountains. It was late and I was exhausted by the time we hit Roanoke, and I found a hotel that took pets so I could get some sleep. 

The next day, I consulted my trusty Rand-McNally road atlas and figured out how to get around the blockade on Rt 81. The minivan was starting to act up, but I was pretty sure it would get me home...the alternatives weren't pretty. The rest of the road trip was uneventful, except that the engine temperature kept trying to climb when I stopped-so I did as little of that as possible. The van got me almost all the way home-when it started spewing white smoke I pulled into a repair shop about 15 minutes from home and had a friend pick me and the dog up for the rest of the trip home. Oh, and that trusty Dodge Minivan? The mechanic said something about antifreeze in the engine block... Oh well, nothing a credit card and a mechanic couldn't figure out...

So much for the trip down memory lane. Now back to the reason for the trip-far as the dog show goes, we're always happy when the judges find our dogs, even if it's for a fourth place ribbon in a larger class. We use the shows to gauge what we need to work on, what changes we need to make to our training, and figure out our show schedule. Looks like I'll be traveling the summer show circuit with Faith, trying to get her to respond more readily to judges and new situations. Here's hoping she'll figure it out!

Show results are posted on the WSSCA.com website, but they may need some editing. Anyway, for Thursday's show with Thelma Ritchie, a UK judge, Faith took 4th out of 6 in the Open Bitch class and Tigg made a cut of 4 bitches in BoB competition. We didn't go any further, but were happy to have been found. Faith continues her love/hate relationship with the show ring. On the outside of the ring she's animated and wagging her tail, and as soon as we enter the ring she puts on her  'I hate this' behavior for the onlookers. So the fact that the judge acknowledged her despite her down tail was something...

Anyway, for Friday we were determined to try to improve that behavior. Open Bitches was a class of 8 this time round, and I wanted to try some new strategies to improve her chances of showing successfully. I needed to duplicate the behavior she was displaying in order to train her to show better. I found a spot right in the grooming area where she was not happy, and grabbed a bag of potato chips to use as a high value treat. I did some basic work with her, rewarding her for any attempts at wagging her tail and being animated, letting strangers approach her and give her the reward. She made some good attempts to jump up and de-stress, so I figured we were on the right track.

Once we entered the ring, her usual ring behavior was back in spades so I got to work. After the initial go-round I passed the time while the other 7 dogs were examined by playing and rewarding Faith for showing animation and wagging her tail. When it was our turn, I could feel that she was a tad lighter on the lead but didn't feel she was really as animated as I wanted. On the final go-round she started to relax and put up her tail, so I felt that all the work I'd done in the ring and outside the ring had started to pay off. Our goal on this trip was to give her four days at the same site to learn to be comfortable showing. At least now we've got a framework for continued work on Saturday and Sunday. I'm hoping she'll figure this out by the end of the weekend, and I'll get a big bag of potato chips for her treats.

What strategies do you have for getting your dogs happy in the ring? Let us know.

Diane and I left Tuesday for the WSSCA National Specialty in Georgia. Weather was fine until we got to Harrisburg area, then it started to rain. By the time we reached West Virginia, it was pretty evident we were going  to be stuck with rain for the rest of the trip. Our travels were relatively uneventful with the exception of the usual jockeying for position with the truckers on Rt 81. Some of them were just not satisfied unless they were going 64 mph in the left lane up a hill and throwing spray up on our car. We did 450 miles the first day, and spent the night in Christianburg, Virginia. 

The next day we continued the trip on Routes 81/77.. While we were driving along on Rt 77, I noticed a shadow on the top of the dashboard that was moving, and had legs. Ugh. Then the shadow disappeared and the bug made an appearance from under the visor and started walking down the windshield. Ugh, Shriek. Ugh. In case you can't tell, crawling creatures are among my least favorite things in the whole entire world. Worse, the shape was exactly like those 'Shield bugs' that we see around the house and yard up north. So, there's me watching the bug, watching the road and starting to feel like there were bugs crawling all over me. Diane's reaction was 'it's only a bug'. Which didn't help when the bug decided the air-cooled windshield was too cold and made a beeline for side column next to me. So, we ducked off the interstate with Di trying to capture the bug at a traffic light. That didn't work, so we pulled off to the side of the road but the bug made its escape into parts unknown in the car. So, after checking to make sure I was bug-free, we pulled into a MickyD's for a more thorough exam. I got lunch, Di scoured the car for the bug knowing I wasn't driving anywhere until it was found, dead or alive. She eventually captured the creature and even showed it to me, so I'd be able to continue driving this trip. Whew-the entire trip almost derailed by a stink bug. Go figure...


Back on the road, we eventually abandoned the interstates and dropped south on secondary roads to avoid major traffic in Atlanta and Macon. We got a chance to see really beautiful rural areas of central GA-makes me want to buy some land and set up a house and training area for hunting, agility and obedience-sigh, We basically trusted the GPS to get us where we needed to be, especially since we hit a detour at one point and had no idea where we were going. We eventually arrived at the Perry show site, set things up and went up to Warner Robins to stay with our hosts for the week, Diane's nephew and niece, Marc and Sonja. Lucky for the girls, there's a fenced yard to romp in and plenty of areas for walking for exercise . They can take a nice walk around the area and the golf course, so they should be able to tolerate 4 days of shows with evening romps to destress. Wish us luck!

Took a peek at what's going on at Ebay today (as a time-waster, since I should be packing for the road trip to Nationals!). First, the John Phillips WSS book is available for less than $50-it's signed and dated and a 1st Edition. So check it out. Next, is the Bill Pferd WSS book, also a 1st Edition (but that's it's only edition, I believe!),  unsigned, for less than $45. The WSSC Book of Champions from 1902-1992 is also available, but for almost $60. So before you buy this one, perhaps you want to check the link I gave on the Art & Books link to see if the WSSC in England still has the book available from their stock. 

An artist with very nice Welshie prints that I like is Lyn StClair. Right now on Ebay there are three breed prints for sale named Splash, Puppy, and Composite. I bought my first StClair print - Splash -from a vendor in Louisville in 1986 when I was competing with Kismet in breed and obedience. It's been up in our bedroom since we moved into this house in 1987. You can find all three prints listed individually with instructions for purchase here - "Welsh Springer Spaniel Lyn St.Clair".

As a sidebar to the Lab/GR discussion, I pulled out my favorite hunt training book-Hup! Training Flushing Spaniels the American Way, by Jim Spencer. If you don't have this book, you should buy it, even if you do nothing more than mess around with a bird wing with your puppy or be a bird shagger at an upcoming  Hunt Test. He's got a chapter on each of the flushing spaniels, including Welshies. The enthusiasm and kindness and patience that Jim Spencer has for flushing spaniels is evident in the book. Interestingly, he was a retriever trainer for many years, and when he got his first spaniels he realized they needed a different training method than the one used for retrievers. And he seems happy to discover that he needed to change his methods.

There's an excellent review of the book on the link I provided above. But, more importantly, read the Preface to the first edition that's with the review article. The preface is from the first edition of the book from 1992 and was not included in subsequent revisions. It was made available by the reviewer with Jim Spencer's permission. It really gets to the heart of my concerns about the differences between Retrievers and Spaniels, and I can only hope that we don't see a shift to more rigorous and demanding retrieving requirements in the Spaniel Hunt Test. And if that happens, what's the point of having Spaniel tests if their style of hunting and retrieving is obliterated? 

Today's blog entry is to note the changes that go into effect in July 2013 to allow participation by Labrador Retrievers and Golden Retrievers (and apparently Airedales, who knew?) in Spaniel Hunt Tests. I admit I was concerned when news of this change first started filtering out. My initial concern was that Retriever entries would flood Spaniel Hunt Tests and Spaniels would get closed out of slots. I see that AKC has tried to prevent that by allowing a limited entry of spaniels and Airedales. (I guess there aren't enough Airedales to pose a risk?) Anyway, I'm satisfied the entry process can be managed to prevent spaniels from losing out on the chance to compete in hunt tests. 

But, I am concerned how the performance of retrievers bringing game to hand will impact scoring of spaniels doing the same thing. One of the neat things about Welshies is that they can be amateur-owner trained for field work, with perhaps some instruction by professional handlers to work out the kinks or problems that may arise. I know this because I did it-really! Will the amateur-owner handler become the victim of new expectations about the retrieve work the dog demonstrates to bring a bird to the handler? Will all spaniels have to retrieve as well as the Lab/GR? If that becomes the case, I'm going to be very disappointed that Hunt Test titles become more difficult for amateur-owner handlers to attain.

Does anyone else think the inevitable comparison between retrievers and spaniels could result in lower scores for spaniels, or cause perhaps tip the scales against spaniels qualifying at all? Let's hear your thoughts.