| About |
| Copyright: Genji Bailey Last Updated: 12.12.2009 |
We began, as do most people, in buying an American Cocker Spaniel as a pet. But as most people who have had Cockers discover, you
can't have just one, you HAVE to get another. Our first Cocker, Jaxon, a solid buff who lived to be 15, and thought he was a cat, but with the
introduction of Dixii, a true solid red, in 1995, he learned he might just be a dog.
Since nobody really cared back then, we had full registration on both of them, and bred them successfully several times. No, they were not
show quality, but we didn't know any better. Then we got a third, Silla, a solid silver, and then a year later, her mother, a true golden. We
stuck with these for a while until a friend rescued some Cockers from a puppy mill near Dallas and offered us several of the ones that she
had rescued and nursed back to health. We only kept two for a few months until permanent homes could be found for them as pets, and
kept two others, a solid black and a solid brown. Now we really had some puppies! We still knew nothing about quality though.
In 1998, after having done research on Cockers - the Cocker info on the Internet was just getting buzzing about this time - I was blessed by
some nasty people in Florida. Blessed, you ask? Yes! Blessed! They started attacking me via e-mail because I knew nothing, but never
asked if I wanted to learn, never offered to teach me, never offered a kind word and tried to trick me into giving them more information with
which they could attack me. How they thought that it mattered to attack someone in Texas who knew nothing, I have no idea, but that was
when I learned that there are some nasty people out there in the Cocker world, and made the decision that I was never going to be like
them.
Because of them though, and here is where we get into the Blessed part, one lone Christian soul, questioned the rational of attacking
versus teaching. She e-mailed me, in the midst of the flurry of nasty messages, and flat-out asked me if I wanted to learn. I replied with a
careful yes, and left it at that, nothing else said. She turned out to be an angel, and I sometimes wonder if she was really even human
because I never met her and about the time I was starting to make contact with show breeders, trying to expand on the knowledge I had
gained from her, she disappeared and I have never heard from her again. She said she had lost her house and was living in a camper, so I
didn't even know where to look for her.
Because of the millions of photos she sent me, quizzing me on what I saw and the Cocker Standard, I learned more and more every day. I
also met, albeit only via phone and e-mail, several people that were very important in the improvement of different aspects of Cockers. I
spoke with Mary Napper of Tumbleweed Cockers several times at length, and met Jean Nelson, who was at that time still in Cockers, at a
show in Texas where for two days she sat with me, and my then 4 year old son, at the corner of a show ring quizzing me on every aspect of
every dog that went around the ring, Cocker and otherwise. She taught me about movement, standard, conformation, and attitude. I still
did not have a dog that would stand up to that kind of scrutiny, but I was learning and changing my views of the dogs I had.
In 1999, I filed for divorce, and began thinking about the future. A new future, one that the Lord would be guiding since it was quite
obvious, with the demise of my marriage, that I certainly did not make the best decisions. This new future, as it turned out, included a
return to my home, Kentucky, a new name for my kennel to glorify the name of the Lord, and a change of life. My son and I moved into a tiny
home, I substitute taught on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when I could, and went back to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays to get
my teaching certification. I was blessed to have a father that paid for everything - my home, utilities, vehicle, and education - but a
now-X-husband who thought that Nashville was calling his name and didn't pay child support for several years because he was homeless.
We lived on the edge of poverty, but had, by this time, a few dogs that were of better quality, thanks to my friend Linda in New Mexico, and
my now-mentor, Coreen Kitto in Wisconsin, although I was still not ready to show.
Then, because I had turned my life over to Christ's control, I passed my state teacher's certification exams, with honors, and had maintained
a place on the President's list every semester of my certification course load, and I was blessed with a student teaching position with
another angel, Angie Smith. Angie guided me through some rough waters learning the practical application of teaching, was instrumental in
getting me the job I still have, and all these years later, is still a trusted friend. Once I passed my internship year of teaching, I laid low, just
recouping, for a year, and then started thinking about showing. I was unsure of the way to proceed, so tried going through friends that said
they would show my dogs for me. I got tricked by one that didn't want m dogs to be better than hers, stolen from and ripped off by another
who just wanted money to by drugs and alcohol, one was older, one was younger. Then, I called Coreen, which I should have done in the
first place. Coreen, having been around the Cocker block for more than a quarter of a century, and with an encyclopedic memory, guided
me to Shirley Jacobsen of Jacobsen's Cockers.
Shirley turned out to be the most honest and loving handler I have ever had the pleasure of working with. She told me what to do with my
first show boy - Romeo - and when Romeo turned out to be afraid of the show ring, she returned him to me immediately so I would not be
out any more money, not that she charged that much to begin with, but I was still poor, recovering from no child support and the terribly low
beginning salary for a teacher. She did say though, that when I got another one ready to show, she would love to be the one that showed
for me. Later that year I started my Masters in Educational Technology and bought my most expensive dog I had ever owned, Tough, from
Janice Pearson. Although I got ripped-off royally by a pair of handlers who shall remain nameless who took almost three thousand of my
oh-so-tight dollars for only five weeks of showing, and didn't even get a single point on my dog, Tough turned out to be the beginning of my
foray into producing dogs that would not only show, but would win, Win, WIN!
A year or so later, Frankie was born, a pup out of one of the two roan girls I got from Coreen and Tough, and Frankie was a pistol. From
5-weeks old, I knew there was something special about the boy, so I called Shirley and she told me, again and patiently, what I needed to do
to get him to her and into the ring. Frankie's first point was a moment I will never forget. Skip ahead a few months. When Shirley had some
family health issues to which she needed to attend though, Frankie was not yet finished, and I had the choice of attempting to trust another
handler or bringing him home. I trusted Shirley to guide me in the right direction, and she did, right to David Sutliff. David finished Frankie
in no time, with 4-point majors over Specials, and I can still recall the conversation in which he told me Frankie was my first home-bred
champion, right after which I went to my friend Keith in Nashville to get Frankie's likeness tattooed on my leg.
By this time I had learned some of the lingo, and had learned a lot about what I liked, conformationally, and was learning that I was really
interested in cultivating the roans. The roans, as someone once told me, were the dirty little secret that some breeders kept in the back
rooms because they were poo-pooed on due to their resemblance to the English Cocker coat pattern. Supposedly, and this is just rumor,
since there were so many English Cockers that were roan, and the American Cocker breeders didn't want to be associated with the ECSs,
that the ACS breeders tried to eradicate the pattern from their lines, but some rebelled and kept is going. I loved the pattern in the two
girls I got from Coreen so much, and had such a hard time finding anyone who had them, that I wanted to cultivate it too.
My major goal was to produce correct Cockers though, so getting correct Roans was a bit of a challenge, but one I wanted to take on. My
goals shifted in 2007 to not just producing show quality Cockers, but to producing show quality ROAN Cockers, and to that end, I decided to
send Shirley a roan as soon as I had a good-un. Martini was born first though, a boy so pretty from the get-go that he just had to be shown,
even if I was never going to breed him myself because he was out of Coreen's roan lines and Tough, the same as Frankie. In the summer
of 2009 Martini became a Champion too, and I went back to Keith to have a mermaid in a martini glass tattooed on my leg as a present to
myself not only for his success, but because I had just completed my Masters, gotten tenure, and had just moved into the home that I had
designed myself and had dreamed about for eight years, complete with an indoor/outdoor fully outfitted kennel, of course.
And then came Sonic. I never even questioned whether or not Sonic would show - he was born to be a Champion - and a Champion he
became in the summer of 2009. Now that I had reached my first goal of producing show quality Cockers, and my second of producing a
show quality roan Cocker, I had to come up with new goals, therefore the entry of a new generation of F.O.G. Dogs - Griffin, ZuZu, and Ozzy -
all from Frankie, Martini, and Sonic's lines, but with the addition of a Julre champion, Macduff, I had purchased. So far so good, but I still
owe myself a trip to Keith's shop for a Sonic tattoo.
My current and future plans have been solidified by both my success in showing, my success with roans, and my natural inclination as a
teacher. I will continue to strive to improve roans as a pattern within the American Cocker breed, and have decided to just show roans, but
in addition, I am also going to start teaching more. I want people who are interested in getting into the Cocker world, both to show or just
with a pet, to avoid those nasty people I ran into, if at all possible, and if they are sincere, I will do everything I can to help them succeed as
my angels and mentors have done for me: Ginger, my angel friend, Jean, Coreen, David, and Shirley. Everyone deserves a chance, or
three, if they are serious about it, and although I have already been burned slightly in giving that chance to some people, that will not deter
me from offering it again, because as all teachers know, you can never give up. One's reputation is not made by the number of students
that succeed at a specific level, but in the quality of education YOU the teacher offer, the attitude of respect that YOU the teacher exude,
and the number of people YOU the teacher help to learn something new.
can't have just one, you HAVE to get another. Our first Cocker, Jaxon, a solid buff who lived to be 15, and thought he was a cat, but with the
introduction of Dixii, a true solid red, in 1995, he learned he might just be a dog.
Since nobody really cared back then, we had full registration on both of them, and bred them successfully several times. No, they were not
show quality, but we didn't know any better. Then we got a third, Silla, a solid silver, and then a year later, her mother, a true golden. We
stuck with these for a while until a friend rescued some Cockers from a puppy mill near Dallas and offered us several of the ones that she
had rescued and nursed back to health. We only kept two for a few months until permanent homes could be found for them as pets, and
kept two others, a solid black and a solid brown. Now we really had some puppies! We still knew nothing about quality though.
In 1998, after having done research on Cockers - the Cocker info on the Internet was just getting buzzing about this time - I was blessed by
some nasty people in Florida. Blessed, you ask? Yes! Blessed! They started attacking me via e-mail because I knew nothing, but never
asked if I wanted to learn, never offered to teach me, never offered a kind word and tried to trick me into giving them more information with
which they could attack me. How they thought that it mattered to attack someone in Texas who knew nothing, I have no idea, but that was
when I learned that there are some nasty people out there in the Cocker world, and made the decision that I was never going to be like
them.
Because of them though, and here is where we get into the Blessed part, one lone Christian soul, questioned the rational of attacking
versus teaching. She e-mailed me, in the midst of the flurry of nasty messages, and flat-out asked me if I wanted to learn. I replied with a
careful yes, and left it at that, nothing else said. She turned out to be an angel, and I sometimes wonder if she was really even human
because I never met her and about the time I was starting to make contact with show breeders, trying to expand on the knowledge I had
gained from her, she disappeared and I have never heard from her again. She said she had lost her house and was living in a camper, so I
didn't even know where to look for her.
Because of the millions of photos she sent me, quizzing me on what I saw and the Cocker Standard, I learned more and more every day. I
also met, albeit only via phone and e-mail, several people that were very important in the improvement of different aspects of Cockers. I
spoke with Mary Napper of Tumbleweed Cockers several times at length, and met Jean Nelson, who was at that time still in Cockers, at a
show in Texas where for two days she sat with me, and my then 4 year old son, at the corner of a show ring quizzing me on every aspect of
every dog that went around the ring, Cocker and otherwise. She taught me about movement, standard, conformation, and attitude. I still
did not have a dog that would stand up to that kind of scrutiny, but I was learning and changing my views of the dogs I had.
In 1999, I filed for divorce, and began thinking about the future. A new future, one that the Lord would be guiding since it was quite
obvious, with the demise of my marriage, that I certainly did not make the best decisions. This new future, as it turned out, included a
return to my home, Kentucky, a new name for my kennel to glorify the name of the Lord, and a change of life. My son and I moved into a tiny
home, I substitute taught on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when I could, and went back to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays to get
my teaching certification. I was blessed to have a father that paid for everything - my home, utilities, vehicle, and education - but a
now-X-husband who thought that Nashville was calling his name and didn't pay child support for several years because he was homeless.
We lived on the edge of poverty, but had, by this time, a few dogs that were of better quality, thanks to my friend Linda in New Mexico, and
my now-mentor, Coreen Kitto in Wisconsin, although I was still not ready to show.
Then, because I had turned my life over to Christ's control, I passed my state teacher's certification exams, with honors, and had maintained
a place on the President's list every semester of my certification course load, and I was blessed with a student teaching position with
another angel, Angie Smith. Angie guided me through some rough waters learning the practical application of teaching, was instrumental in
getting me the job I still have, and all these years later, is still a trusted friend. Once I passed my internship year of teaching, I laid low, just
recouping, for a year, and then started thinking about showing. I was unsure of the way to proceed, so tried going through friends that said
they would show my dogs for me. I got tricked by one that didn't want m dogs to be better than hers, stolen from and ripped off by another
who just wanted money to by drugs and alcohol, one was older, one was younger. Then, I called Coreen, which I should have done in the
first place. Coreen, having been around the Cocker block for more than a quarter of a century, and with an encyclopedic memory, guided
me to Shirley Jacobsen of Jacobsen's Cockers.
Shirley turned out to be the most honest and loving handler I have ever had the pleasure of working with. She told me what to do with my
first show boy - Romeo - and when Romeo turned out to be afraid of the show ring, she returned him to me immediately so I would not be
out any more money, not that she charged that much to begin with, but I was still poor, recovering from no child support and the terribly low
beginning salary for a teacher. She did say though, that when I got another one ready to show, she would love to be the one that showed
for me. Later that year I started my Masters in Educational Technology and bought my most expensive dog I had ever owned, Tough, from
Janice Pearson. Although I got ripped-off royally by a pair of handlers who shall remain nameless who took almost three thousand of my
oh-so-tight dollars for only five weeks of showing, and didn't even get a single point on my dog, Tough turned out to be the beginning of my
foray into producing dogs that would not only show, but would win, Win, WIN!
A year or so later, Frankie was born, a pup out of one of the two roan girls I got from Coreen and Tough, and Frankie was a pistol. From
5-weeks old, I knew there was something special about the boy, so I called Shirley and she told me, again and patiently, what I needed to do
to get him to her and into the ring. Frankie's first point was a moment I will never forget. Skip ahead a few months. When Shirley had some
family health issues to which she needed to attend though, Frankie was not yet finished, and I had the choice of attempting to trust another
handler or bringing him home. I trusted Shirley to guide me in the right direction, and she did, right to David Sutliff. David finished Frankie
in no time, with 4-point majors over Specials, and I can still recall the conversation in which he told me Frankie was my first home-bred
champion, right after which I went to my friend Keith in Nashville to get Frankie's likeness tattooed on my leg.
By this time I had learned some of the lingo, and had learned a lot about what I liked, conformationally, and was learning that I was really
interested in cultivating the roans. The roans, as someone once told me, were the dirty little secret that some breeders kept in the back
rooms because they were poo-pooed on due to their resemblance to the English Cocker coat pattern. Supposedly, and this is just rumor,
since there were so many English Cockers that were roan, and the American Cocker breeders didn't want to be associated with the ECSs,
that the ACS breeders tried to eradicate the pattern from their lines, but some rebelled and kept is going. I loved the pattern in the two
girls I got from Coreen so much, and had such a hard time finding anyone who had them, that I wanted to cultivate it too.
My major goal was to produce correct Cockers though, so getting correct Roans was a bit of a challenge, but one I wanted to take on. My
goals shifted in 2007 to not just producing show quality Cockers, but to producing show quality ROAN Cockers, and to that end, I decided to
send Shirley a roan as soon as I had a good-un. Martini was born first though, a boy so pretty from the get-go that he just had to be shown,
even if I was never going to breed him myself because he was out of Coreen's roan lines and Tough, the same as Frankie. In the summer
of 2009 Martini became a Champion too, and I went back to Keith to have a mermaid in a martini glass tattooed on my leg as a present to
myself not only for his success, but because I had just completed my Masters, gotten tenure, and had just moved into the home that I had
designed myself and had dreamed about for eight years, complete with an indoor/outdoor fully outfitted kennel, of course.
And then came Sonic. I never even questioned whether or not Sonic would show - he was born to be a Champion - and a Champion he
became in the summer of 2009. Now that I had reached my first goal of producing show quality Cockers, and my second of producing a
show quality roan Cocker, I had to come up with new goals, therefore the entry of a new generation of F.O.G. Dogs - Griffin, ZuZu, and Ozzy -
all from Frankie, Martini, and Sonic's lines, but with the addition of a Julre champion, Macduff, I had purchased. So far so good, but I still
owe myself a trip to Keith's shop for a Sonic tattoo.
My current and future plans have been solidified by both my success in showing, my success with roans, and my natural inclination as a
teacher. I will continue to strive to improve roans as a pattern within the American Cocker breed, and have decided to just show roans, but
in addition, I am also going to start teaching more. I want people who are interested in getting into the Cocker world, both to show or just
with a pet, to avoid those nasty people I ran into, if at all possible, and if they are sincere, I will do everything I can to help them succeed as
my angels and mentors have done for me: Ginger, my angel friend, Jean, Coreen, David, and Shirley. Everyone deserves a chance, or
three, if they are serious about it, and although I have already been burned slightly in giving that chance to some people, that will not deter
me from offering it again, because as all teachers know, you can never give up. One's reputation is not made by the number of students
that succeed at a specific level, but in the quality of education YOU the teacher offer, the attitude of respect that YOU the teacher exude,
and the number of people YOU the teacher help to learn something new.
Top Left: Indoor kennels going in as
they build our home.
Top Right: Puppy play yards going in
as they build our home.
Bottom Left: Outdoor kennels going in
as they build our home.
Bottom Right: Our home, finally
completed in August, 2009.
they build our home.
Top Right: Puppy play yards going in
as they build our home.
Bottom Left: Outdoor kennels going in
as they build our home.
Bottom Right: Our home, finally
completed in August, 2009.