March 22, 2020
Back in July 2019, my dear husband had finally endeavored to assist me in the redesigning of my website. The original Woodwyn English Cocker website was first put up on the internet in the early mid-90s and at the time it was one of the very first and very few EC breeder sites. Prior to that I was an active participant on dog newsgroups, including hunting groups where I was constantly advised that show-bred dogs don’t hunt and my freezer full of pheasant was a figment of my imagination.
Over the years I have learned much and have done what I could to help others with Spaniels get their dogs out to do what they were born to do. I am not a professional trainer nor do I have any aspirations of being one. I’m an abysmal handler under pressure. I do, however, believe in our spaniels being true examples of the breed on the inside as well as on the outside. I have held seminars and workshops on introduction to birds and basic training for hunt tests to help new people find and develop their dog’s inherent passion.
Lifestyles and goals change and we went from a houseful of dogs to just a few. In the last few years we’ve had only 2-3 at any given time and I decided dog ownership was much more enjoyable when I didn’t have so many personalities to shuffle around and coats to maintain. Besides this, the introduction of a half-field bred bitch, Morgen, brought me back to easy-care coats, something I’d missed with the emphasis on thick sculptable “show coats” that were such a nightmare on an actual working hunting dog. I now spend a lot more time enjoying my dogs and a lot less worry and guilt about grooming chores. If I never have another high-maintenance, dense, soft “show coat” to maintain I will be quite pleased.
What do we do?
My dogs are hunters.
Not just hunt test and field trial competitors. Hunters. All of them. Every dog in my house has hunted, including those that were not titled.
We are Swamp Yankees
As such, the difficulty of situations we find ourselves in far surpass the kind of situations and terrains encountered in tests and trials. Clean, grassy fields are a luxury as are dry, briar-free woodlands.
The grounds we hunt vary from chest-high weedy fields dotted with multiflora rose, raspberry and blackberry stands, to swampy grassy cover, to swamp densely packed with 10’ reeds to woodland swamp full of barberry, to large stands of laurels, to ledge dropping down to swamp. There are small brooks and small ponds to be crossed both in the questing and the retrieving. Though we can hunt some dry farmland, swamps are nearly always encountered at some point. It’s a fact of life in northeast CT.
It’s been my overwhelming experience that the average casual “meat hunter” does not hunt with a trained, steady dog. In fact, many of the dogs that are used by the casual hunter would not pass a Junior hunt test for lack of control, bad mouth (hard on the birds), and sloppy, indirect, and incomplete retrieves just to list a few deficiencies. Many of these dogs were casually bred and of no particular lineage, so abilities can vary. None-the-less, inherent birdiness, drive, skill, tenacity in the cover, persistence, initiative and biddability suffices to fill the game bag.
But back to my blog……
In my blog my intention is to give some insight to how we go about raising, training, and working with our dogs and our adventures afield. All but my most current dogs were show bred, some were show champions, and I hope my stories will pique interest in those who own and breed show breds to consider and select for the stuff between the ears as well as the shell that contains it.
