“Storm”
CNFC FC Warrener’s California Quail
10/3/2002 – 11/5/2012
English Cocker Spaniel
Owner, Handler, and Breeder: Paul McGagh, Glencoe Farm & Kennels, Bismarck, ND
Whelped: 10/3/2002 Deceased: 11/5/2012
Lemon Roan Dog
By FC Oahe Sentinel x Gwynnfield Misty
After a lifetime dedicated to working spaniels, I count the truly great ones on one hand. The grace of a great spaniel represents beauty and beauty transcends explanation. It’s something impossible to define but humbling to witness. The best dogs are not necessarily the most precise ones.
I use the word “great” with reluctance. These days it’s bandied around describing any dog that wins a trial or two. I’ve been lucky to win Nationals with dogs that were good but not necessarily great. At his best, Storm played a game I was not familiar with.
Storm’s grand sire, “FC Griffin’s Pride Rocky”, was graciously labeled the “Muhammad Ali” of Cockers by renowned British spaniel man and author, Keith Erlandson, who had judged a total of four field trials in America with Rocky winning three of them. I handled Rocky to all his placements including those under Keith, but what intrigued me most was the allure of Canada. Unlike the United States, Canada allows Cockers to compete against Springers in trials and their National Championship. After my first Canadian National in 1999, when I turned homeward with Rocky perched in the seat next to me, I had learned three things. First, as the lone cocker against a field of 116 Springers, Rocky had held his own taking a CM and the Guns Award. Second, I was made acutely aware it would take a miracle for a cocker to win. Third, I knew I would be back and wondering, had we placed limitations on our expectations of Cockers. What were they really capable of doing?
While still in his whelping box, we noticed Storm possessed a compelling self awareness, confidence and bravado; a presence that was indefinable but hard to ignore. Vicky and I took him back to California as a puppy for the winter. We, in equal measure, spent time with him. This corresponded with reading a book on bird dog training written by Earl Crandle, which did not mention the word spaniel but subsequently molded the way we trained.
I related to Mr. Crandle’s approach to put a solid obedience foundation on a pup from its earliest days, lending it structure while its brain is the most pliable. Then, training becomes looser and I let the pup build confidence and style with a free approach on its initial, often prolonged, exposure to chasing birds, knowing full well that a solid foundation is in place to retreat to when desired. Storm’s solid breeding has carried forth through the years. His dam, Gwynnfield Misty, was the grand dam of the 2012 US Cocker National winner, the dam of the 2013 US Cocker National winner, grand dam of the third place dog and great grand dam of the fourth place dog. The 2014 National, she was the grand dam of the winner, great grand dam of second place dog and grand dam of third and fourth place dogs. Alas, she received no semblance of an obedience foundation and her significant drive was never fully harnessed. Through her long life she blissfully remained convinced pheasants were only for chasing!
As a two year old, I took Storm to his first Canadian National in Saskatchewan by virtue of a first place qualification in a 54 dog springer trial in Manitoba. He took fourth at that National. In 2005 we again went to the National Championship in Nova Scotia. I wrote the following shortly after the event:
“At the time of the 2005 National, Storm had just turned three. He’s a powerful dog and like powerful dogs, he can be a handful at times. Normally when I walk him to the line I am all business and stern.
There remained 25 springers and 1 cocker in the fifth series out of the original 86 dogs. We were about halfway through the running order. I watched Casey Butts, Jim Keller, Marty Knibbs, Jason Givens, Alice Stewart and John Mitchell putting down great fifths. I had the feeling it would take something extraordinary to win. I decided to throw caution to the wind and I reached down and gave Storm a big hug and told him how proud of him I was. I didn’t want him to appear even slightly stifled.
I was told to cast off Storm again and after quartering for a short while, he made another, very positive, find on a cock pheasant that rocketed out to our left and was crumpled by the left hand gun. Storm made a potentially difficult retrieve look very easy. I would have loved to have stayed down for another ten birds!
“Do you believe in miracles?” I asked Vicky when I phoned her. Storm had won, becoming the first cocker ever to win the Canadian Spaniel Championship.
A week before he died, I shot a limit of sharp tail grouse over him on a beautiful North Dakota evening. The last, a wing tipped bird, ran along a furrow between prairie grass and alfalfa. By the time Storm delivered the bird to hand he was truly spent. This last grouse symbolized how he had lived, giving everything he had. On this evening he had nothing left. That is the last sharp tail grouse I’ve shot. I especially enjoy watching them dance on their lek in the springtime, remembering my old friend.
Storm, in his own small way, traveled north and proved a little cocker could take on “the big dogs, toe to toe” and occasionally come out victorious. He was, is, and will remain, my world Champion.
Paul McGagh