| Keith Erlandson - A retrospective view. |
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-2- The following year he won an Open Spaniel Stake with his foundation bitch Breckonhill Brando and took the risky decision to move to Caernarvonshire and set up as an independent professional trainer on rented ground. A year later he moved to Denbighshire, where he acquired facilities in return for keepering a small moor. Purchase was finally possible, and two moves later, the Fron Mountain became the base for ever more effective trialling and breeding operations. Keith Erlandson had, since 1950, brought his uncompromising qualities to gundog politics and sporting journalism. Always engaging, he had never eschewed the streetfighter's role when principle had demanded bruising commitment. Soft words was not a style he recognised. No wonder, perhaps, that he had not always endeared himself and that acknowledgement of his record in some quarters can seem grudging. Achievements at Froncysyllte, though extraordinary, were not exactly unheralded. In 1960 he had taken the Championship held on Shadwell Heath, near Thetford, with an outcrossed bitch called Micklewood Slip. Outcross it might have been, but it was a mating which also produced FTCh Markdown Muffin, which ran second in the 1961 Championship and won it the following year at Blenheim Park, Oxfordshire. Keith had, meanwhile, also made up the bitch he considered "the best Springer spaniel I have ever trained, handled or seen". FTCh Dinas Dewi Sele collected 42 awards, of which 10 were firsts. A highly efficient shooting dog in all circumstances, she evinced power and drive at their most compelling yet had the sort of temperament which made correction of her minimal transgressions an effortless matter. Whilst her progeny were never spectacular, her daughters bred good ones and she proved "the firmest possible bedrock'' for building a line of sound, consistent Trial and shooting spaniels. Breeding success had already been marked. Breckonhill Brando, when put to Conygree Simon, produced Hales Smut and FTCh Jontis Gwibernant Gynan which, between them, did much, the latter in Ireland, to stamp the qualities of the best O'Vara bloodlines into the Springer spaniel drive, style and gamefinding ability certainly, but above all trainability. Style, the quality of movement which gives work eye appeal, matters but Keith considered that there was now too much emphasis upon it. Trainability is vital to a dog's willingness to be honest in its work, to drop and stay dropped, for instance, when a gun has to turn his back on it to shoot. |
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