Ellie: The Dog Who Owns My Soul
In the beginning… I had never hunted, or hunted over a dog, or had any idea what a hunting dog should look like. At best, I had seen some photos and paintings of hunting dogs and their gun wielding owners. But it was far from a reality in my mind. It was something that people in fly-over states did. Not people in California.
We had had dogs my entire life. Every breed of pet and mutt under the sun it seems. Little ones, all the way up to a Great Mastiff, named Lolly, who used to enjoy waking me up by laying her humugus head on my chest and slowly applying more pressure until I woke up to her dinner plate size shnoz 1” from my face. My mom had raised guide dogs growing up, so she knew a thing or two about training dogs, and all of ours were reasonably well mannered. She also had my sister and I enrolled in dog training classes with any new puppy at the local pet store, and in 4-H. So we had some inkling of how to get dogs doing things that make them pleasant to be around. But that was the extend of my dog experience. They were pets, and companions.
When I first started practicing falconry 7 years ago, I thought the ultimate goal was to fly peregrines and hawk ducks (it still may be the ultimate goal… but that’s a story for a different time). I had asked a few of the more well known peregrine fliers in our community if they would take me out flying. A few of them did, and the one thing they all had in common, was a good flushing, swimming and retrieving dog. So, I figured if I wanted to do this, I better get a flushing, swimming and retrieving dog.
I started googling breeds to see what I wanted to get. They all ran either GSPs or Veizlas, and I didn’t want something that hyper (at the time, I didn’t realize that the true hunting lines of these dogs don’t have to be insane 24/7 like the “pet bred” dogs I had met up until them). So I started searching for calm, family pet, flushing dogs. Of course, the Labrador was at the top of every search. But I had yet to meet a lab I truly enjoyed being around, so they were out. Then, I found the English Springer Spaniel. I had no experience with spaniels, but everything I read about them, I liked.
I started searching for breeders, and emailing about future litters. I was amazed to learn that most hunting breeders had a 1 to 2 year wait list! Previously, when I wanted a dog, I decided on the breed, hopped on Craigslist, and could have a puppy by the end of the week. I might have even been able to negotiate the price down. (yes… classic supporter of American back yard breeders. I didn’t know better at the time. So give me a pass on this one.)
Over the course of my searching, I learned the difference between a US bred “pet” spaniel, and a true hunting spaniel. I found a breeder who I really liked who only bred hunting dogs, and his whole pack also seemed to be actively hunting and field trialing. His name was Ed Epp, and his kennel was in Florida. He put me on the list for a puppy, and I waited in sheer agony for months until I heard confirmation that the litter I was hoping to pull from had conceived. YES! This was actually going to happen!
The litter was born, and I absolutely wanted a female. He sent me photos of all of the females, and I chose an absolutely perfect black and white little puppy, with even black spots over the top of her head and both ears. I had known from the beginning that I wanted a black and white spaniel. So this little girl was perfect. The litter grew, and Ed sent periodic photos of the pups. I made my final payment to claim my little girl. But when the pups were about 6 weeks old, Ed emailed me and told me that the black and white female had an eye infection, and he wasn’t confident that she would recover from it with all of her eyesight. He suggested I pick a different dog. I was heartbroken. There were no other black and white females in the litter. I didn’t want the other dogs. They just looked plain to me. But he insisted that the other dogs would make great dogs, and we settled on a brown and white female, with a small white stripe up the middle of her face between her brown ears. He sent me a photo a few weeks later of her retrieving her first quail, and I figured things would be OK.
When the pup was old enough, we arranged for her shipment from FL to CA. She came on a midnight flight, and touched down in Sacramento just before midnight. My then-boyfriend/now-husband drove with me to pick up our new pup.
When we got there, I could hear her screaming from inside her kennel from all the way outside of the cargo lot… at 1am in the morning. Oh boy. I crossed my fingers that this was not a sign of things to come.
They brought out to me the tiniest kennel I had ever seen. Could my new dog really fit into that thing? I peaked in, and sure enough, the most precious little ball of fluff I’d ever seen was staring, screaming back at me.
We took her outside and open the kennel door, and out burst a wiggly ball of fury! She was jumping on us, and wiggling, and every body part seemed to be going in a different direction. We let her get some wiggles out and then settled in for the long drive home. Fortunately, she slept in my arms almost the entire time, grateful to be out of her crate and back with people.
For the next year, we enjoyed watching our little girl grow. We knew nothing about hunting dogs, so we just treated her like a normal house pet puppy. We took her everywhere we could, crate trained her, replaced things as she destroyed them, and I think at some point swore to never get another puppy again in our lives. Lol.
When she was a year old, I started searching out trainers. A friend of mine had a lab that she said was a duck hunting dog (who was I to question her?) and that he was trained by her neighbor, Sheldon Twer. So I gave Sheldon a call. He was very kind and invited us to bring her down for training. When he asked what I wanted her to do, I explained that I wanted her to swim in the ponds and help me scare up ducks for the falcons. He laughed. “That doesn’t take any training to get a dog to do”. We agreed he’d train her to be an upland dog. I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like the right thing to do, so I left my dog with him.
Those were the hardest months of my life. I didn’t have any vision of what an upland dog looked like, so when I’d call for updates and he’d tell me “we are working on quartering” or “I am working on her retrieve to hand” or “I am making sure she is steady to shot”, all I could think was “I don’t need a dog that does any of that! Can’t I just have my dog back?!” But I trusted him every time he asked for a few more weeks, and left my dog with him.
After 4 months, he told me my dog was ready to come home. I showed up to pick up my dog. Sheldon had left that morning for a trials or something, so his kennel assistant brought her out to me, and we loaded her into my car. I had no idea what my dog was trained to do, but apparently, she was trained. So we went home.
Over the next few years, I saw bits and pieces of her training come out, and liked all of it. I never considered it a waste of money, even thought I had no idea how all the pieces fit together. I enjoyed trail running, and would take Ellie with me. I enjoyed watching her quarter through the brush on the sides of the trail. When we stopped, she’d immediately sit, or lay down next to me. When birds flushed, she’d immediately sit and wait for me to call her (I didn’t know at the time that I was supposed to shoot the things. Lol). When we went places, any time we stopped, she’d just laydown and wait, attentively looking around. I later learned that this was taught with long mornings spent on the tie out line learning patience. I loved this particular trait, and got so many compliments about it. But I had no idea where it came from.
A few times over the years, Id try to hunt a hawk over her, and let her flush rabbits. It never really worked (due to our rabbit populations, or the areas I was hunting not being safe for a dog), so Ellie never really got to “hunt”. She was very obedient, and I loved that, but I still had no idea what the entire picture looked like.
I got Ellie in 2015, and she was trained in 2016. In 2020, on a whim, I put in for one of the apprentice hunts put on by the California Fish and Game. Amazingly, I was drawn for this hunt! Oh shit! I don’t even own a shot gun! Fortunately, my dad had one he let me borrow for this event. I had no idea what to expect, but the invitation letter said that if you had a trained dog, you were welcome to bring it. Well… heck! I had a trained dog… I think? So I tossed Ellie and my borrowed shot gun in the car and went to this hunt.
For the rest of the story… https://www.diariesofanovicedoghandler.com/blog/how-i-came-to-upland-and-dogs