Gundog Training Forum

The thing that made Erlandson stand out was his breadth of knowledge as well as his depth of it. He was not a one horse show, he had a go with not only springer and cocker spaniels but also with golden retrievers, labs, pointers and setters and one or two HPR's.

I liked his books more than those of any other gundog author but an ability to read between the lines was needed !

Wullie

peterbeater wrote:Naj,in your posts you mention mr Erlandson and his dogs.do you rate him as the best trainer/handler that you saw during your time trialling?.not just the best handler but the full package trainer/handler.

I didn't do that much trialling myself - I'm not that competitive, so was only involved in the running of a dog over 4 seasons with a few placings at open stake & the inevitable COMs - but my mentor was a keen trialler & took me everywhere with him. Erlandson was the 'Oppenshaw' of his day & his tally of FTChs was as staggering then as we find Oppenshaw's track record is today. People either loved him or hated him. He was relatively younger - looked a bit of a wild man with his long straggly hair & beard - than his peers & a practical dogman who always came out with a hard hunting, no nonsence dog at a time when the usual crowd that frequented the circuit were generally from an older, more conservative generation & perhaps more stuck in their thinking. My mentor & many of his contemporarys tended to pick-up rather than shoot over their trials dogs, but Erlandson shot over them all & they always had great gun & game sense, which i'm sure gave them the edge.

Was he the full package? He was a lousy 'handler' on a blind compared to what you would expect to see today, & simply pushed the dog into the area & left it to get on with it, but he believed that spaniels should be about hunting, not handling like a retriever. He tended to take a step forward each time he tried to push the dog back & always ended up several yards forward of where he started. A popular joke was that when hunting, he covered more ground than the dog did, for he would wander from side to side from one patch of cover to the other, but that was simply how he advocated that you hunt a dog, & his dogs could never be described as weak hunters. He was not a fancy trainer that could handle his dogs on a sixpence, as is common today, but he always turned out a workmanlike dog & he had a knack of choosing the right bloodlines. Lawton Evans was probably my favourite handler.

I think Erlandson was in the vanguard of the new blood coming into spaniels. Oppenshaw was a teenager not much younger than me when I first became interested in spaniels, running a dog called Mallowdale Smut, & he went on to become the next man of the moment. There was a raft of new talent coming into spaniels over the following years - Combes, Bateson, Martin, Longville, Elwick, Knight, De'ath to name but a few, & they could all 'handle' a dog better than Erlandson, but he still managed to win against them on his day, & take the Championship from Oppenshaw when everybody thought they'd seen the best of him. His legacy must be in breeding Hales Smut, & then recognising & promoting the breeding potential of what, on the face of it, was a failed trials dog. If he was starting as a novice today he'd have to pull some more tricks out of the bag to be competetive, but he was a natural dogman & I'm sure would have risen to the occasion.

Hales Smut wrote:I would not like to start a discussion who is the best trainer/handler. But do not underrate Mr Ian Bateson. I don't know how many he made up, but trained a huge number of dogs which where "to" much dog for others. A lot of these dogs became champions after passing through his hands. He also "trained" one of the present top handlers/trainers.
He loves the true genuine hunting dog and tries to keep them alive.

an excellent point, Ian is an excellent trainer and can keep a handle on many a hard hunting spaniel that others have given up on.

Hard going, hard hunting cover bashing dogs can be taught to handle easily if the trainer is up to it and the dog has a brain. I completely refuse to accept that the hard hunting spaniels of the past were poor at handling through their breeding, more so the handler was not adept at teaching them.

I agree that everyone should aspire to be able to shoot over their dogs, & I would have hoped that any field trial judge would shoot over their own dogs regularly. It takes the expertise & knowledge in handling a dog to another level & provides deeper insight into the whole process. I don't believe that you are the complete handler until you have successfully shot over your own dogs on a regular basis. Forgive me for harping on about Erlandson, but he is a prime example. He was essentially a shooting man who trialed his shooting dogs. He could read a dog or a shooting situation like a book. If you asked him about a particular dog's run he would tell you exactly what the bird was doing & how the dog made contact, how it was shot & how that impacted on the outcome of the retrieve & the dog's performance in completing it. He would as likely tell this to a complete stranger standing next to him, whether he wanted to hear it or not! I have never met anyone as intuitive.

Naj

oh crikey, if that's the case then I will never be a 'complete handler'! However, my partner accompanies me on regular training sessions, standing next to me and shooting over my dogs for me, I also work the dogs on rough shooting days, beating and picking up and feel I do have a good grasp on reading a dog and the game in front of me, before and after it has been flushed and shot.

Hales Smut wrote:I would not like to start a discussion who is the best trainer/handler. But do not underrate Mr Ian Bateson. I don't know how many he made up, but trained a huge number of dogs which where "to" much dog for others. A lot of these dogs became champions after passing through his hands. He also "trained" one of the present top handlers/trainers.
He loves the true genuine hunting dog and tries to keep them alive.

the question was aimed at Naj and was asked about the times he was trialling years ago.everyone knows who is the best these days so i have no need to ask that one

Naj wrote:

peterbeater wrote:Naj,in your posts you mention mr Erlandson and his dogs.do you rate him as the best trainer/handler that you saw during your time trialling?.not just the best handler but the full package trainer/handler.

I didn't do that much trialling myself - I'm not that competitive, so was only involved in the running of a dog over 4 seasons with a few placings at open stake & the inevitable COMs - but my mentor was a keen trialler & took me everywhere with him. Erlandson was the 'Oppenshaw' of his day & his tally of FTChs was as staggering then as we find Oppenshaw's track record is today. People either loved him or hated him. He was relatively younger - looked a bit of a wild man with his long straggly hair & beard - than his peers & a practical dogman who always came out with a hard hunting, no nonsence dog at a time when the usual crowd that frequented the circuit were generally from an older, more conservative generation & perhaps more stuck in their thinking. My mentor & many of his contemporarys tended to pick-up rather than shoot over their trials dogs, but Erlandson shot over them all & they always had great gun & game sense, which i'm sure gave them the edge.

Was he the full package? He was a lousy 'handler' on a blind compared to what you would expect to see today, & simply pushed the dog into the area & left it to get on with it, but he believed that spaniels should be about hunting, not handling like a retriever. He tended to take a step forward each time he tried to push the dog back & always ended up several yards forward of where he started. A popular joke was that when hunting, he covered more ground than the dog did, for he would wander from side to side from one patch of cover to the other, but that was simply how he advocated that you hunt a dog, & his dogs could never be described as weak hunters. He was not a fancy trainer that could handle his dogs on a sixpence, as is common today, but he always turned out a workmanlike dog & he had a knack of choosing the right bloodlines. Lawton Evans was probably my favourite handler.

I think Erlandson was in the vanguard of the new blood coming into spaniels. Oppenshaw was a teenager not much younger than me when I first became interested in spaniels, running a dog called Mallowdale Smut, & he went on to become the next man of the moment. There was a raft of new talent coming into spaniels over the following years - Combes, Bateson, Martin, Longville, Elwick, Knight, De'ath to name but a few, & they could all 'handle' a dog better than Erlandson, but he still managed to win against them on his day, & take the Championship from Oppenshaw when everybody thought they'd seen the best of him. His legacy must be in breeding Hales Smut, & then recognising & promoting the breeding potential of what, on the face of it, was a failed trials dog. If he was starting as a novice today he'd have to pull some more tricks out of the bag to be competetive, but he was a natural dogman & I'm sure would have risen to the occasion.

another great post from days gone by.keep it up

I too am pretty sure that if Erlandson had still wanted to win in todays spaniel trials he'd have been well capable of upping his game to cope with more modern handling requirements. I was one of the folk that did like him, I didn't get much chance to talk to him in person, I only ever met him in person at trials. I did correspond with him by letter a few times.

I agree that he was a world class "ground stealer !" I watched him do this in a trial here in Scotland, the judges had to almost pull him back to where he'd first sent his dog from for a retrieve !

Wullie

Rothievale wrote:

oh crikey, if that's the case then I will never be a 'complete handler'! However, my partner accompanies me on regular training sessions, standing next to me and shooting over my dogs for me, I also work the dogs on rough shooting days, beating and picking up and feel I do have a good grasp on reading a dog and the game in front of me, before and after it has been flushed and shot.

Wow, Helen, it wasn't meant to be personal.

My point being that it is one thing keeping a dog steady & under control when someone else is doing the shooting for you or when beating or picking-up, situations where you can concentrate 100% on the dog, but it surely takes more expertise to successfully shoot over the dog yourself while maintaining the same level of control. I was always amazed when most of the pickers-up on the shoots that I worked on, keen field triallers, would leave their labs at home when it came to them shooting on the beaters' 'cocking' days at the end of the season because they didn't want to risk spoiling them.

Rothievale wrote:Hard going, hard hunting cover bashing dogs can be taught to handle easily if the trainer is up to it and the dog has a brain. I completely refuse to accept that the hard hunting spaniels of the past were poor at handling through their breeding, more so the handler was not adept at teaching them.

You're right, in part, the older handlers in the 60s & early 70s lacked the know how or the will to train their dogs to handle - sorry, I thought I'd made that clear in my post. But if you are claiming that the temperament & trainability of the springer, in general, hasn't improved over the intervening 40 years, then I think you are wrong. Why not ask Ian Bateman if the breed has changed since the days when he ran Jay of Newgrange & Sandvik Triumph? It would be interesting to hear his opinion.