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Keith Erlandson, 1931-2004

Keith Erlandson, one of Britain’s greatest spaniel gundog trainers and
field trial handlers, died March 14, 2004, at Froncysyllte, northern
Wales, after what a friend described as “a horrible scrap with bone
cancer.” I met Erlandson and his wife Audrey at their hilltop home in
the Berwyn Mountains in 1994 while on a gun-buying and
spaniel-prospecting trip ten years ago.

Born near the Humber Estuary of a Swedish father and an English mother,
Erlandson wrote that he became interesed in shooting “as a means of
getting something to eat, as food was scarce” during the war years. A
gamekeeper and then a professional dog trainer and handler, he made up
more than 20 field trial champions over 33 years, including several dogs
– both springer and cocker spaniels – that won national championships on
both sides of the Atlantic.

Erlandson did much to save the working cocker in Britain and, by
extension, in North America. He judged field trials in many European
countries and in the US and Canada. A prolific writer for British
shooting publications, he also published two books, "Gundog Training"
(1976, and reprinted several times) and "The Working Springer Spaniel"
(1995).

Erlandson was a lively writer unafraid to speak out against the politics
and commercialization of field trialling, and what he considered to be
wrong within the sport and with the breeding of some of the dogs
participating in it. He once stated: “A pure trial dog that is no
shooting dog is, to me, no dog at all.”

English gundog authority and journalist Graham Cox once characterized
Erlandson as “not unlike” the cocker spaniels he adored in being “highly
amusing” and possessing “a devilish sense of humor.”

Here’s one of my favorite passages from "The Working Springer Spaniel":
“The old gentleman from the Nether regions is a keen shooting man and
when he shoots, he shoots over a pack of Cockers . . . black Cockers,
with live embers for eyes. Each one runs in and gives tongue and all
bite their birds like fury. Every now and then their owner sends his
worst stud dog to earth, to mate a few bitches, thus ensuring that his
chosen qualities are not lost.”

I trust that Keith is gunning somewhere far above the Nether regions,
running his dogs through more hospitable coverts.

– Charles Fergus