Fated to be a Spaniel Man

My name is “Jerry” Ray Cacchio, and I am honored to be taking over the writing of the Flush column for Gundog Magazine.  It is a privilege to be able to share my passion for flushing dogs with a similarly passionate audience.  In the coming issues I will share some of the tools and tricks I’ve learned over a career in the dog world, in the hopes of helping you, the reader, streamline your training.  What’s more, I fully intend to offer up my own adventures and misadventures in the realm of flushing dog training, trialing, judging, and hunting.  It has indeed been a colorful journey. 

You might say that I was fated to wind up a flushing dog man.  I was born in Poughkeepsie, NY in an era when the sporting dog breeds were still largely intact, and ‘show’ traits had not diluted some of the great bloodlines.  My Grandfather, Herman Mellenthin, was a well-known American Cocker breeder and trainer, who took Best in Show twice at Westminster with My Own Brucie, and was posthumously inducted into the American Spaniel Club Hall of Fame in 1995.  Though he’s widely considered to have established the standard for the modern American cocker, my grandfather remained committed to producing dogs that could perform in the field as well as the show ring, and his line of spaniels saw plenty of work in the covers around the Hudson Valley. Unfortunately, I was quite young when my grandfather, also young, passed away, and my early education was taken over by my uncle George. 

George considered it is duty to bring me up to speed in his three favorite things, namely hunting/fishing, chasing women, and drinking liquor, often in that order.  He was a steady and enthusiastic teacher, allowing me to watch and learn as he trained and hunted cockers throughout my teenage years.  When I was twenty-two, George helped me acquire my first personal dog, a $65 runt from a litter of springers that I named My Own Alex.  Under George’s watchful eye I trained and hunted Alex, though for our first two years afield, George would not even let me carry a loaded gun, for fear that my focus would stray from working the dog to shooting at birds.  Needless to say, I’ve remained far more interested in watching the dogs to this day.

In 1967 I started my professional career by accident.  I had been training upland labs and springers with a woman named Ruth Greening, who lived nearby, and trained professionally.  Ruth was the genius behind the Ru-char line of springers (later to become a Field Trial Hall-of-Famer) and she had been teaching me and giving me exposure to a range of dogs and training techniques.  When Ruth suffered a heart attack, she asked me to take over her dogs.  Coincidentally, around the same time several good local flushing dog trainers either retired or passed away, and I somehow became the only game in town. A young dog named Roger had bounced among these trainers, and none were able to get a ribbon on him. When, invariably, Roger landed on my doorstep, he became my first open champion, and with that I began to develop a reputation.

Throughout my early career I maintained a day job at IBM, which allowed me to fund the construction of my own kennel in Clinton Corners, NY.  Pond View Kennels, as I went on to call it, was to become my soul focus after I left IBM in 1985.  The Hudson Valley where the kennel was located has a deep hunting culture, and there are several old gun and hunt clubs in a relatively small radius.  Therefore, my training became focused on ‘gentleman gun dogs’, flushing dogs that would work close in the small cultivated fields of the clubs, and would be well mannered in the home and the kennel.  The proximity of the kennel to these clubs also allowed me plenty of opportunity to train and handle dogs in real hunting situations, and my dogs were afforded an incredible amount of live bird exposure.  The region lies less than a 2 hour drive from Manhattan, and many successful New Yorkers have second homes throughout the valley, and hunt or shoot at these clubs throughout the year.  It was in this way that I found myself running with some pretty fast company, and developing personal relationships with the likes of Jim Kinnear (Texaco), Bruno Bich (BIC Pens), Tom Brokaw, David Roderick (US Steel), and Randolph Hearst, and, of course, with their dogs.

Over the course of my time owning Pond View I trained and trialed extensively, building an ever-growing network of friends and customers in the flushing dog world.  I became close with Ian Openshaw of the Rytex line, and spent a good deal of time in England and Wales training and handling with Ian and his wife, the lovely Wendy.  Stateside, I managed to win two English Springer Spaniel open Nationals with two different dogs, one of which, NFC Pondview's Left In The Light ("Lefty"), made it to the English Springer Hall of Fame.  After a long and wonderful career as a full-time trainer, I retired in 2005 and sold the kennel, handing down the business and much of the training philosophies to my close friend Dan Lussen.  Dan maintains Pondview II kennels, and I train with him every summer in New York.  I continue to judge flushing dog trials, and I have the distinction of having judged more trials than anyone in the US.

In 2012 I had the supreme honor of being inducted into the Field Trial Hall of Fame.  IN 2015 I was a nominee for and AKC Lifetime achievement award.  Despite these incredible accolades, of which I am tremendously proud, I remain driven by the same passion for dogs that I had as a boy.  I look back over a rich life with flushing dogs, and wouldn’t change a thing.

Currently, I am retired, which simply means I get to pick and choose the work I love to do most.  I consult extensively fro Purina in their sporting dog division, traveling to events and kennels across the US.  I oversee the Dog Breeder and Trainer endorsements licensed by the Orvis Company, and I work with Orvis the primary consultant on all facets of their gundog business. I judge trials when and where I can.  And I an perhaps happiest when, each summer, I return to the training fields around Clinton Corners, where Dan Lussen and I still help dogs develop their potential, and become the best performers that they can.

So this is my life and career, wrapped up into a few paragraphs.  I remain dedicated to helping folks buy, train, own, hunt, and trial their own flushing dogs, and I hope to use this column as a forum for doing just that.  In the coming issues we will discuss a range of topics, from positive reinforcement methods to picking a puppy, to analyzing and replicating the perfect flush.  Please feel free to contact Gundog with topics you’d like to see teased out, and by all means don’t hesitate to send questions.  There is no topic, big or small, that I am not excited to address (provided, that is, it has to do with flushing dogs!!).

Collab, First Published in Gundog Magazine