Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 7 3 Y ou could have knocked me over with a woodcock feather. I had attended a number of Purina-sponsored events over the years, all of them fairly intimate affairs – maybe 20 people, about two-thirds of them writers and editors, the rest various authorities on training and canine nutrition brought in to share their expertise and provide us media types with grist for our mills. So when I arrived at the hotel outside St. Louis for a gathering Purina had billed as the "Sporting Dog Tom Davis u n d o g s G Canine health, nutrition, and conditioning were on the menu at the star-studded Purina Sporting Dog Summit. Summit," I expected something along the same lines. I followed the signs down a long hallway, stepped through the open doors of the banquet room . . . and while I can't say for certain that my jaw dropped, I'm glad I didn't have to speak for a while. There were 80 or 90 people in the room if there was one, and as I looked around and began to identify the other participants, my mild state of shock morphed into acute disbelief. Was that big, craggily handsome man (think Waylon Jennings with a decent haircut) actually Robin Gates, the trainer and handler of the two-time reigning National Champion, Shadow Oak Bo? No way! How the hell did they con him into leaving his summer camp in Manitoba, where he'd been prepping his star-studded string of pointers and setters for the upcoming prairie trials? The trim, youthful-looking guy over there – my God! It had to be Mike Lardy, the winner of a record seven National Open Retriever Championships and the youngest person ever elected to the Retriever Field Trial Hall of Fame. And unless I missed my guess, Lardy was talking to Danny Farmer, another Retriever Hall- of-Famer who's won more Open stakes than any handler – ever. The woman sitting at the table in the back of the room, the one with the dark, wavy hair and the aura of intense concentration . . . Could that be Sherry Ebert, the better half of the team that guided the Smith Setters to unprecedented achievements and, for good measure, invented the whoa barrel and the roading bar? I'd been he canine experts at Purina's Sporting Dog Summit offered tips on raising healthy gundogs. They all agreed that good health and nutrition begins when canines are still pups. T photo by ron spomer