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40 NEBRASKAland • JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2015 better incentive to keep your dog well trained. The problem was, there weren't any trials for English cockers. The breed lost favor in England for various reasons in the 1950s and by the 1960s, the decline in breeding stock there led to a shortage in the U.S. and the end of its field trail series. That was until 1993, when Williams and other "black sheep" in the Rocky Mountain Springer Spaniel Club who owned cockers decided that they wanted to do more than train their dogs at the club and help at the springer trials. So they put together a cocker trial that drew dogs from around the country. In the years that followed, more cocker trials sprung up, and a national trial returned in 1998 after a 35-year hiatus. Williams took Zeke and the cockers that followed – Reba, Ace and Pearl, who he bought in 2004 from Paul McGach, a nationally-known breeder and trainer in North Dakota – to a few trials, but didn't get serious until he retired in 2010 and moved back home to Crete with his wife, Nancy, a Lincoln native. "Mostly through the years, I've trialed casually and hunted seriously," Williams said. Part of the reason was there aren't enough English cockers in the country to warrant the number of events the pointing breeds host. "You've got to be committed to putting in a lot of windshield time to go hit them," said Williams. When he started out, he would hit a few trials in Texas, California, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota in the spring. Now he's added an Airstream trailer and has been to trials on both coasts and most in between. He's never gone to any of the trials held in the fall. "Then it's time to go chase wild birds," he said. While Williams said Reba was the best cocker he's had (she started late and won a field championship at age 10), it was Pearl that benefitted from his experience and the extra time available to spend on the circuit that retirement offered. Nationals The National Cocker Championship field trial is open to any dog that places in a local trial within the previous three years. Pearl made her first appearance at the nationals in 2008 and was eliminated after the third round. She returned in 2011 and lasted one more round. In 2012, she received a certificate of merit, putting her in the top eight. Despite the improvement, Williams said he went to the 2013 national field trial near Bismarck, North Dakota, "with high aspirations but low expectations. Winning it would be great, but no one expects to. At least I didn't expect to. I just figured it's a long shot when you're running against that many dogs, all quality dogs. Everything in the trialing game has to fall just right to win something like that. You can have the best dog there and things don't work out for you quite right and you end up with nothing. I went there with the goal to just finish the trial." In cocker field trials, handlers set out on foot to follow their dogs in search of two planted birds. Dogs that pass a bird, fail to sit or stand after a bird is flushed and shot, flush a bird off another course, retrieve another dog's bird or fail to retrieve, are out. Dogs that pass those tests are judged in how hard they work through the cover, their scenting ability and how they use the wind, how they handle and other attributes. Dogs run two at a time through two rounds, and the best advance to the final. In nationals, there are five rounds, followed by a water retrieve. Judges will start to weed out dogs they feel aren't qualified after the first two rounds. Of the 72 dogs entered in the 2013 championship, Pearl was one of only 10 that made it to the final round. One of those decided it didn't want to go in the water on that day, leaving nine. When it was over, Williams knew Pearl did well but had no idea how well when the awards ceremony began. In the end, she left with the Guns Award, chosen by the gunners as the dog they'd most like to hunt over, and the national title. "I was quite surprised," he said. "I was just amazed. It's like a lot of things. It would be great if it happened, but you never really think it will." At age 9½, Williams thought that was Pearl's last chance. In human years, by popular theory, she was in her 60s. It speaks to her bloodlines, particularly Pearl's mother, which produced two other national champions, one of them in Canada, and a national point champion, he said. It almost was her last chance. Last The only disadvantage to hunting over a cocker is slight: the dogs are hard to keep track of in tall grass.