AKC Gazette Gallery: The Long Stay — A photo history of AKC obedience

Описание: During a 1933 visit to England, Poodle breeder Helene Whitehouse Walker, of Mount Kisco, New York, observed training tests staged by the Associated Sheep, Police, and Army Dog Society. On her return home, she devised a canine obedience test of her own, based on the British model. Walker held her first formal obedience test in October 1933 on her family estate.
In the following year, she persuaded the nearby North Westchester and the Somerset Hills (NY) kennel clubs to hold obedience tests, the first to be held at AKC dog shows. The show fancy, and the AKC, began to take notice.
Walker fatefully met Blanche Saunders in 1934, when Saunders answered Walker’s job posting for a kennel maid. Saunders, a natural-born dog trainer with a degree in animal husbandry, got the job.
With her Poodles in Saunders’s capable hands, Walker concentrated on convincing the AKC to add obedience to its family of dog sports. She succeeded in 1936, when the AKC adopted obedience trials as an official titling event. To popularize the new sport, in 1937 Walker and Saunders remodeled a Buick to fit three dogs in the backseat and hauled a 21-foot trailer across 10,000 miles in 10 weeks to perform demonstrations at dog shows.
Saunders recalled, “The ringside was crowded as everyone was anxious to see the two crazy women from New York with the trick Poodles. … People were enthusiastic and their applause lavish. Part of this may have been due to the Poodles’ fancy hairdo, but in much greater part it was due to the thrill of seeing [dog] Carillon Epreuve work in obedience.”
Saunders became the face of obedience as it swiftly grew in popularity. She conducted demonstrations in Rockefeller Plaza and at Yankee Stadium. Her book “Training You to Train Your Dog,” first published in 1946, was a steady bestseller well through the 1970s. It was followed up by nine more books, in addition to six widely circulated educational films.
Known as the “trainer of trainers,” Saunders was the subject of an extensive profile in New Yorker magazine in 1951, and it is likely that any dog owner from the era would recognize the iconic instructional photos gracing Saunders’ books and magazine features. How poignant to try to imagine a world in which dog training was an unfamiliar concept.

COVER: Blanche Saunders, circa 1930s
1. Helene Whitehouse Walker with Berkham Augusta, circa 1933.
2. 1939: Blanche Saunders with Ch. Carillon Courage, training for a Westminster obedience demo.
3. Mrs. Walker’s apricot Poodle Tango of Piperscroft, called by Blanche Saunders “the granddaddy of Obedience in America.”
4. Blanche Saunders performing an obedience routine at Rockefeller Plaza as part of National Dog Week observances.
5. Walker and Saunders spread the word of AKC Obedience over WNYC Radio, New York, circa1937.
6. This Percy Jones photo shows an obedience competition between Army and Coast Guard K-9 teams. The caption accompanying it in the March 1943 Gazette said that “the special task of dog breeders and owners is the production of the finest possible canine members of the armed forces.”
7. Yankee Stadium, June 26, 1953: The fifth annual “Obedience Night,” where Blanche Saunders staged a team obedience competition before the Yankees–Indians game.
8. After years of promotion by Walker and Saunders, obedience trials caught on at dog clubs across the country.
9.Shetland Sheepdog Davy O’Dugald, UD, an obedience whiz of the 1950s and ’60s, owned, trained, and loved for 13 years by Marjorie Perkins, of Claremont, California.
10. 1956: Kathleen Prince and her Norwegian Elkhound Ch. Just Torvald That’s All, UD, the breed’s first UD obedience dog.
11. Alfred Treen with owner-handler Martha Leonard and her High in Trial English Springer Spaniel Donahan’s Whimsy, CDX, at 1984’s AKC Centennial Show.
12. January 1977: An obedience Bulldog photographed by Jim Dearinger, recipient of the inaugural AKC Lifetime Achievement Award for obedience.

For information on doing obedience with your dog: https://www.akc.org/sports/obedience/

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