By Bill Tarrant
Reprinted by permission of Field & Stream

Championship status is not the only criterion for good breeding. All romanticists are skeptics.  It’s marbled into their makeup.  For romanticists go to their graves wondering: Did I have the best of all romances?

So, romanticists are always seekers.   But they know not what they seek.  If they knew, it stands to reason, they’d go there and get it.  But having done this, they could no longer be seekers, nor romanticists.

That ’s why all true hunters and fishermen are romanticists.  Their quest is to stalk and cast, not to kill and take.

And so it is with men who seek with dogs.

John Marsman is such a man.   But so deceptive.  In appearance he’s neat, clean, precise, like a freshly sharpened pencil – one that’s been used and sharpened halfway down with no need for the eraser.  And thus the deception, for we’re accustomed to seekers being tattered, rumpled, consumed in disuse – like a child’s discarded crayon.

John is vice president of merchandising for Heddon, the artificial bait manufacturer, which claims the distinction of having carved the first plug out of wood in 1897 when the company’s founder, James Heddon, whittled a stick while waiting for a tardy fishing buddy.  Upon the buddy’s arrival, Heddon tossed the torpedo-shaped carving into Michigan’s Dowagiac Creek and a largemouth bass set off an eruption that cast spray around the world.

And all this goes to prove two things.  James Heddon wasn’t a seeker.  He was a finder.  And like most finders, he stumbled onto discovery.  Seekers don’t let themselves get tripped up like that; they step over such obstacles or sneak around them.  And the second thing proven?  Fish will strike a lure that’s got no paint!

This is important, for Marsman and I are in Heddon’s plant talking to Robert Jones, director of product development.  Jones designs and tests fishing lures, which qualifies him as a fish expert along with Jonah, Captain Ahab, and Huckleberry Finn.

I ask Jones, “Tell me about fish and color.  Are fish really color blind like it’s said?  Marsman tells me Heddon’s got 358 color combinations.  Does this mean fish see color? Do they prefer one color to another?”

Jones, a stub of a man with chuckle voice and smile-tugged eyes, grins and peers somewhere over my left shoulder.  Then he explains, merrily, “Yes, color is very important to fish.  You see, if the bait don’t attract the fisherman he’ll never buy it.  And if he don’t buy it, he won’t use it.  And if he don’t use it, the fish will never see it.  And if the fish don’t see it, he’ll never bite.”

I understand why Jones was chosen to design fish baits: I bit.  His answer is as evasive as it is charming.  Out of his plant I ascend in pout, vanquished, knowing Jones can only be handled by Field & Stream’s A. J. McClane.  Once again it’s proven I can’t play with the big kids.  For me, it’s always a dog’s life.

No longer in delusion of angling grandeur, I sit in John Marsman’s apartment, content with my dog’s role.  And that’s good, for Marsman’s five Brittanys are as friendly as used-car salesmen.  This is all temporary, John and his wife Marie being holed up with two Brits in the living room, and three in the kitchen, of a four-room apartment.  Their new home is nearing completion – a home where the builder could probably hang the cupboard doors upside down and get away with it, but don’t make a mistake on those kennels!

John’s a different kind of dog man: a different kind of seeker.  He’s telling me about it.  Telling me in that manner of speech that always marks one who’s earned advanced degrees.  You know the kind: The mind is rust- and smudge-free, brilliant, like it’s been sprayed with WD-40.  But, the mind cannot be certain it is understood.  Consequently, each thought must be presented in more than one way.  And sometimes it’s all like a snake with its tail in its mouth, rolling as a hoop.

John says, “Those of us who hunt and fish, we like the finest fiberglass rods we can buy.  A lot of us feel that someday we’re going to have a $250 or $350 bamboo rod.  Even though we know that fiberglass is better, we still want that fine, beautiful seven-and-one-half-foot fly rod.
“We want the finest over and under we can buy with that beautiful piece of burl walnut in it.
“And you know, it doesn’t matter about your station in life if you have a feeling and interest in the outdoors you sort of want some of the better things, some of the finer things that go with it.  You know, you make your choice.

“People who don’t normally, or can’t normally, buy Browning guns and Orvis bamboo rods, have them.  Maybe they’ve given up some other things to do it.  But they know what good is in terms of quality and value and beauty in what they’re buying.

“And I think that in buying a dog, at least in Brittanys, buying a dual dog, one that has the ability to win on the bench as well as hunt in the field, you’re getting that special quality of a beautiful looking specimen of the breed.  And I think that if more people realized they’re getting something more than just some old hunting dog with a nose, they’d have a lot better pride, not only in the hunting that they’re doing, but in the dog that they own.”

And thus is revealed John’s Holy Grail.  The crusade he champions, the goal he seeks, is to raise and train bench champion Brittanys and then take them hunting.

I’ve heard dog men say, “I don’t give a damn if he’s colored green and got three heads.  That don’t matter.  Can he find birds?”

What they’re saying is, “Beauty is as beauty does.”  John says, “No! Beauty is as beauty looks to the eye, then as beauty does.”

John wants to put a dog out front that looks as good as it works and works as good as an Orvis bamboo rod or a Browning Superposes shotgun does.

Through correspondence, John had complained to me about the trend in American dog breeding.  He’d written me that indiscriminate breeding – puppy mill operations – are turning out dogs inimical to the future of the breed.  Now in his own words he explains, “People’ll take two registered dogs from anywhere and anybody and just try to make puppies and sell them as registered dogs.  Sometimes they’re good and sometimes these people are intentionally breeding bad dogs.

“For example, there are dogs that are champions today, either in the field or on the bench, or in some cases dual, who have rather bad cases of hip dysplasia.  And yet these dogs are bred and the people are advertising the males at stud.  And they know these dogs have hip dysplasia.  And yet they go right on offering the dog at stud and breeding the dog and perpetuating bad hips.”

John’s remarks are both timely and appropriate.  Not a week before I sat with Mr. John Olin and peered through the windshield of his blue Fleetwood Cadillac at Nilo Kennels, in Brighton, Illinois, while he watched his eight trainers display 1974’s puppy crop.

This man is dogdom’s greatest 20th century benefactor.  Head of Winchester Arms, holder of several English springer spaniel and Labrador retriever national championships, importer of quality bloodlines from all over the world, founder of O.F.A. (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, the research headquarters and control registry for hip dysplasia in dogs), and the many other good things he has done for dogs has earned from me the title “Mr.” in an age of journalism where such a title is seldom assigned.

This 82-year-old living legend turned to side on the mouse-gray Caddie seat, his gray felt hat with the 2-inch black-band square on his head, his ringless fingers rubbing the silver handle of his polished cane, and requested, “Please tell your Field & Stream readers not to breed to a dog just because he’s a field champion.  Such breeding is producing in America today Labrador retrievers with a pinched nose and a sickle tail.  And the bitches are small-boned.

“This is not what England, or we, intended with the breed.  We must return to a breeding program that emphasizes a good head, good running gear, good dogs.

“Just because a dog has proven himself a winner in the field doesn’t mean he’ll do so in the whelping box.”

Now I sit with John Marsman and hear Mr. Olin’s words repeated.

It is a fact, in order to enhance puppy sales, Americans are breeding to big dog names: field champion this, national field champion that.  Dog men like to buy pups they can point to and boast, “Yea, that’s Pard. Out of NFTC Bird Vacuum, he is.  Old Bird Vacuum was the greatest dog that ever lived…”

What may not be generally broadcast is the Old Bird Vacuum ran with an Achilles heel.  Just so happened no one ever stepped on it while Vacuum was performing in the field.  But it shows up in his pups.  They all locomote like jackals.

Now I challenge Marsman, repeating what gun dog men say, men who spend so much time afield that the game pouch in their hunting coat is rotted out.  They say, “Don’t tell me about no show stock.  I want a huntin’ dog.  Let those bench dogs sit on their satin pillows, give me a dog that can find birds.”

John stands.  What the hell?  He going to fight?  He’s thin and hard as a fireplace stoker, his eyes as black.  He answers,  “We’ll see in the morning.  I’ll put my bench champion Evansport’s Lovely Leah onto chukar.  You judge for yourself.  Leah is fifteen months old, won her championship in ten outings, where the average is twenty-seven, and last year she cut a leg so badly hunting in the field we had to have stitches.”

John’s made his point.  Leah’s leg scar proves her mettle under fire and she took it to the bench to win with blemish.

So come morning, John and Leah and I strike out over a game preserve.  A silver frosts coats the foliage, an apricot line tones the eastern horizon.  John enters the field with polished boots.  Leah strikes out to the command, “Hi on.”

Merrily, eagerly, she moves, never stopping her hunt, continually coursing, quartering, circling.  Now she’s got a whiff of feather.  “Whoa, whoa,” admonishes John.  He runs forward.  Leah’s pointing with her head forty-five degrees to the terrain.  She’s pointing the top of a tree.

I look up.  There sits the liberated pen-raised chukar.  Now the chukar flies, dipping as it goes, brushing the top of a seven-foot pine seedling.  Leah breaks to wing and chases.  Now she stops to point: she’s pointing the top of the pine where the bird brushed its body in passing.

Well, I’ve seen points and I’ve seen points.  I need say no more, not of Leah’s, anyway.  I’ll take her hunting any day – and carry her satin pillow.

During the remainder of the morning, Leah works the game preserve mini-plots with maxi-potential.  An hour before noon all birds are accounted for.  It’s a reluctant Leah that’s put to crate.  She cries all the way to town.

She cries and I fidget.  My jeans are covered with beggar’s lice and they’re sticking me.  But I’ve got more than beggar’s lice to stick with me on this trip.  I got Mr. John Olin telling me what to write and John Marsman proving why I should.  For Leah is not the product of a chance mating.  She’s a programmed creation out of selected line breeding.  Her sire and dam didn’t get together until the breeder got all his facts together.  And the breeder looked not to the parent’s titles.  He looked instead at the dogs themselves; conformation, size, running gear, head, color, stamina, nose, coat, disposition, tail, feather, eye insert, ear cock – all the things that make or break a dog.

But how the hell they planned a Brittany that’d point a chukar in a tree is, quite frankly, beyond me.