Asked, which eight dogs would Keith take with him to that notional desert island and, predictably, Speckle's name was uttered first. FTCh Dinas Dewi Sele was included, as was Breckonhill Brando, Rivington Joe and Southfield Sam, a cocker which never ran a trial but sired the enormously influential Rhu of Midgedale. He could be mated to Speckle. Two Pointers, Fearn Graham and Friday Duke, who ran third in the 1986 Championship, were selected and the team completed by the Springer FTCh Cortman Lane, whose qualities brought Keith back into competition after a sense of disillusion with "Field Trial politics" had prompted him to withdraw.
It was some return. Though attended by just the sort of controversy which compelled that earlier decision, Lane, Keith's 20th Field Trial Champion, won the 1986 Championship stake at Grimsthorpe. There is no space among the eight for the dog who accomplished what Keith considered the best piece of work he had seen, though. FTCh Gwibernant Ashley Robb's collection of a strong cock runner at Rossie Priory in Perthshire in 1972 was the epitome of gundog skill. It ran a great distance alongside a ditch. Robb took the line but lost it by the hole of a big sycamore. After making a huge cast in the wrong direction he corrected himself and cast again unaided. The line was regained, the bird was taken up another ditch and into the open before being picked in a lone whin-bush.
Such resolute initiative and an appreciation of the need to regulate pace when searching for shot game is only learned by being shot over. Keith's charges, bird-dogs as well as spaniels, had the benefit of his Moor, 20 miles from his home in the Berwyns. Adjacent land rented from the Countryside Commission was managed under an agreement which ensured that the land remained ungrazed and Keith revelled in both the shooting and his periodic sightings of the Harriers, Peregrines, Merlins, Buzzards and Kestrels which also worked the ground.
On matters of gundog organisation, Keith wanted to see that executive powers of the Field Trial Committee, vested in the Field Trial Council and he felt that it might be beneficial if trials outside the remit of the Kennel Club were allowed since that body might become "less of an ogre and more of a father-figure". Not that he thought pressing reforms in practices were urgent, indeed he considered, there were no lessons from abroad to be learned, save perhaps in the matter of stamina.
Keith's judging experiences in Europe had caused him to reflect on the disenchantments that prompted his own withdrawal from competition. Asked what change he would have liked to have seen if a magic wand could be waved he requested, with an enigmatic glint, "the power to make us all as nice to each other as the Dutch are".