My personal record
Over a 30+ year span of time, beginning in 1976 to date
My first two dogs, Barbie (named by my daughters!) and Jigger, each ran fewer than twenty trials in their careers. Both of these dogs were Qualified All-Age, and both were extensively hunted. I was an amateur trainer/handler during that time. I trained about 3 days per week with D.L. Walters for about 3 of those years.
Then, I was away from trials for about ten years, during which time I was an assistant trainer to John Hahn – a professional trainer, who taught me Carr-method Basics. A few years later, I started training gun dogs part time, and eventually acquired a handful of field trial clients who recognized the quality of my work – especially with young dogs.
My wife and I soon loaded up our dogs and headed for Escalon, CA to train with the late Rex Carr. Upon return, I ran a regular schedule of field trials with my client’s dogs over about a 3-½ year span. The following record was amassed over that period of time.
While my field trial prospects were developing, I had one dog to run in a few local trials that won two Qualifyings, and Jammed an Amateur. We opted to retire her because she was dysplastic, and was also because she a very weak cold water dog. But she was also one of the first titled Master Hunter dogs in the early days of AKC Hunt Tests.
When I began running the trial dogs I had developed we began immediately to place those dogs in licensed Derbies.
- Star got a 2nd at 13 months – ending up with 17 points, and being QAA while still a Derby dog.
- Lucy won her first Derby at 12 months – ending her Derby career with 49 points (national #3), going on to become an FC-AFC, two-time Double Header winner and a National Amateur finalist through the efforts of several subsequent trainers. I trained and handled her to her first Open placement; a 3rd.
- Bart had 8 Derby points and was QAA by age 13 months – ending his Derby career with 19 points. He regularly placed in both Derby and Qualifying at the same trials. After taking an Open 2nd at 26 months of age, we sold him to a client of Bill Eckett’s, and he also became an FC-AFC, as well as being sire to FC-AFC’s.
- Faye gained 14 Derby points and won a Qualifying while she was still a Derby dog.
- Wrinko (a Golden) had 11 Derby points. I also made him QAA with a Qualifying 2nd at Memphis.
Others that placed, but did not make the Derby list that year included:
- Bubba (a littermate to Star) had 9 points, including a win. Also a Qualifying win as a Derby dog.
- Shots had 8 points, including a win
Other client dogs
- Doc, a dog with All-Age points, but that had not been successfully through even one first series in over a year, and was placed with me for only two weeks to prepare to run in the Open at St. Louis for his owner. He had been entered, but the owner was not able to attend. I took 4th with him and sent him home.
- ****, a Labrador female whose name I no longer recall, was nicely bred (Harley) and had been trained by her owner. She had never placed in a trial, and her owner wanted her to be QAA prior to breeding her. In less than a month she took a Qualifying 2nd while I was running early spring trials in the Southeast.
- Chaos (AFC Winsom Cargo’s Chaos) is my personal favorite story from my brief FT pro career. My friend Lanse Brown approached me at a spring trial in South Carolina. The Open was beginning, and he said, “Evan, I have a dog I’d like you to look at. I’ve ruined her”. One of the greatest qualities about Lanse is that he has always taken ownership of his errors. You don’t have to wait for the FT rumor machine to inform you about something he’s done because he’ll be the first to tell you. That’s just one of the reasons why I love Lanse.
He went on to tell me how he had browbeaten her. He said she had been as wonderful and stylish as any dog you’ll see, but that he had taken the joy out of her work to the extent that she no longer wanted to even retrieve. He had held her out of trials for a year, presumably hoping that absence might make her heart grow fonder of the work, or that perhaps she may just forget the bad parts of it.
The first series was starting - a walk-up Quad with a flyer as the go bird. He asked me to come and watch her, and give him whatever I could as an assessment, and an opinion on whether or not I could help her. She went for the flyer…and then she remembered, apparently. She didn’t go for any more birds.
He asked me if I thought I could help her. My best recollection of my reply was, “Based on what I’ve seen, and upon what you’ve told me about her, I don’t know. But if I take her, I want her for a year. And I don’t want to see you until I call you because we both know you’re the problem. If I have her for a reasonable amount of time, and I don’t think she will make it, I’ll call you and send her home. That’s the best I can do.”
It was ugly for a long time. I took some opportunities to check her out both in training, and by running her as test dog in trials here and there. A lot of other trainers thought I was crazy for wasting my time with her because she looked so awful. I spent about two months running her on puppy marks, and suspended any blind work for a while. I took special care never to con her. She had been there, and done that.
Nearly a year later, our local club hosted the PRTA trial on the weekend following our regular licensed trial, at which Lanse judged the Open. The week between the two was the first time Lanse had seen or handled her in that period of time. He entered her in the Amateur at the PRTA trial, along with his other two dogs that he had subsequently placed with me. The results of that trial are as follows.
- Chaos: Amateur 1st
- Louise: Amateur 4th
- Ivana: Qualifying 3rd
As gifts from a grateful friend and client, all three trophies have hung on my office wall since then, and continue to occupy that space.
I do not now, nor have I ever claimed to be a field trial hero. I chose my family over a career as a field trial pro. I was at a point at which I had to either buy a bigger truck, and some grounds, or go back to college and be there for my family. I chose the latter.
I’ve been accused by some, who are ignorant of my work with dogs, of being an Internet “Wanna be” who had accomplished nothing. Others, for whatever reasons, have asserted that I’ve “run field trials for over thirty years in pursuit of titles”. They have demonstrated their ignorance in so doing.
Since 1992 I’ve run dogs in fewer than a dozen trials – mostly as a favor to a friend. But it’s somehow important for certain individuals to attempt to make an apparent side-by-side comparison; me vs. their favorite field trial pro, so they make these baseless accusations, firmly implying that I have no ability to train dogs at an All-Age level, or that I’m pretending to be ( Insert the pro’s name ).
Not only am I aware of my abilities as a trainer, but also that I have a gift to teach. I welcome anyone to choose for himself or herself what method of training to follow. I also welcome all scrutiny, both of my ability to train, as well as to teach. I continue to be amazed at the handful of tiny minds that now and then crawl out from under their rocks, distorting the truth about me in order to exalt their favorite trainer. That’s their choice, and they serve more merely to confess their own ignorance than to establish any constructive truths. But I have found that if your idea or position on something has real merit, it will stand on its own without need to run someone else down. I continue to maintain that posture.
Evan Graham
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