From the March/April 2015 issue of Sporting Classics.
In 1963 a 17-year-old New Jersey girl named Sherry married a 21-year-old Pennsylvania man named Harold. Horses she knew, dogs she didn’t, but her husband, a wiry redhead with dreams of making it big in the bird-dog world, was fixing to change that. He took Sherry to Georgia, where since 1959 he’d worked for Fred Bevan, a professional trainer with a considerable reputation and a kennel operation to match.
Soon she was working for Bevan, too—and no employer, ever, got a better two-for-the-price-of-one deal than Fred Bevan did when he hired Harold and Sherry Ray. They worked long hours for short pay, their list of duties and responsibilities was endless, but they were the kind of people who couldn’t bear to leave a job unfinished and knew only one way to do it: the right way.
That doesn’t mean, though, that they weren’t continually looking for a better way. During his years with Bevan, Harold had rubbed shoulders with some of the best trainers in the business—John Gates, Herman Smith, Jack Harper, the list went on—and whether by observing them in the field or picking their brains away from it, he never passed up an opportunity to learn. The hundreds of dogs he worked for Bevan, both in the piney woods of Georgia and on the limitless prairies of Manitoba, had much to teach as well.
In time, Harold Ray formulated his own ideas about training bird dogs and, in particular, developing prospects for field trial competition. Sherry was totally on the same page, but as they grew more knowledgeable and confident, their relationship with Bevan soured. He’d been in the game since the ‘30s, and he was increasingly content to let the Rays do the heavy lifting while he coasted—and took the credit.
In the fall of 1966, Harold abruptly cut ties with Bevan. Several well-established pros had approached him about working for them (with the understanding that he and Sherry were a package deal, of course), but after seven years he’d had a bellyful of being somebody else’s “assistant.” He wanted to helm the ship himself, and when he accepted an offer from Elwin and Inez Smith to train privately for them, he had the chance to do just that.
It would prove to be a life-changing, and even history-making, decision.
Diehard English-setter enthusiasts from Pennsylvania, the Smiths had been involved in grouse-dog field trials since the 1940s. Bevan had trained some of their dogs but by the mid-’60s, their focus had changed. They wanted to develop a select string of homebred setters capable of competing in the highest echelons of horseback shooting-dog competition—and in Harold and Sherry Ray, this young, attractive couple whom the Smiths had come to know through their association with Bevan, they believed they’d found a combination with the skill, dedication, and energy to bring their ambitious goals to fruition.
Needless to say, the Smiths’ instincts were spot-on. If they’d bought a winning lottery ticket on the day they hired the Rays, they couldn’t have gotten any luckier.
Almost before it started, however, the Smith–Ray relationship was interrupted by events in a place that they barely knew existed: Vietnam. Harold was called up in 1967, saw action in a number of bloody engagements (including the Tet Offensive), and while he returned in time to take the dogs to the prairies in 1969, they had a lot of catching up to do. They’d pinned their greatest hopes on a gorgeous black-ticked female named Susan’s Lady Bird, but she’d taken several giant steps backward in Harold’s absence, and it took everything he and Sherry had to get her right again.
But all their faith and hard work paid off when, with Harold handling and Sherry scouting, Susan won the National Prairie Chicken Shooting Dog Championship that September. It was the first championship for the Rays and the first for the Smith Setters under the Rays’ guidance. But that was only the beginning. The 24-year run that followed would ultimately re-write the record books, establish an English setter dynasty, and see six names, three dogs and three people, added to the roll of the Field Trial Hall of Fame. The dogs are Tomoka, The Performer, and Destinare; the people are Elwin Smith, Inez Smith, and Harold Ray.
One deserving name is conspicuously missing from that list, and I shouldn’t have to tell you whose it is.
These days she goes by Sherry Ebert and lives in Mott, North Dakota. She and Harold divorced in 1993, and a few years later she married Kyle Ebert, whose family has deep roots in the area.
Most folks would describe Sherry as a dog trainer, and while that’s the core of who she is and what she does, she’s much, much more. She’s a dog trainer, a people trainer, and a sought-after field trial judge. She’s an inspiration, and an icon, and a woman who speaks her mind regardless of the company she’s in or the reception she’s likely to get.
When she came to North Dakota, though, she had no clear plan. All she knew for certain is that she needed to make a fresh start. But as soon as her phone was hooked up, it began to ring.
“People knew,” she says, in her direct, plainspoken way.
What she means is that while Harold had gotten the lion’s share of the credit for Smith Setters’ success over the years, a lot of people knew that Sherry had played an equally important role. And, in particular, they knew that Sherry was every inch Harold’s equal as a trainer—in some respects perhaps his superior.
Build it—whether it’s a ball field or a reputation for being the best at what you do—and they will come. Her specialty, from the beginning, has been developing field-trial prospects for amateur owner-handlers, and while she’ll happily train any breed of pointing dog, most of her clients are setter people. That doesn’t come as any surprise, but what is a little surprising is how many of those people prefer their setters red. The list of AKC Field Champion Irish setters trained by Sherry Ebert is long—and growing.
It comes back to her insistence on treating every dog as an individual and not imposing a rigid one-size-fits-all training regimen. She has the rare ability to recognize each dog’s capabilities (and limitations) and tailor its training accordingly. If you can point to a single reason for her success with setters—especially in light of the difficulties that so many other field-trialers seem to have getting the best out of dogs with long hair—that’s it.
During the past decade or so Sherry’s taken the next logical step and become a trainer of trainers. The Irish Setter Club of San Antonio sponsors a Sherry Ebert seminar every winter on the fine points of training and handling field trial dogs. Each summer she offers individualized instruction for one or two people at her home in North Dakota. For a number of her clients, these summer sessions have become annual pilgrimages.
Of all the living legends assembled by Purina last summer for the Sporting Dog Summit (see Gundogs, November/December 2014), Sherry Ebert was the one I was most excited to meet. By way of introduction, I told her that the first puppy I ever bought was a son of Tomoka, the dog that, more than any other, established Smith Setters, and the team of Harold and Sherry Ray as forces to be reckoned with.
“John (Tomoka’s call name) was the first dog I did all the training on,” she allowed. “When we’d go to Manitoba we’d divide up the young dogs, and in 1971 John was one of mine. I knew he was something special, but every time I tried to show him to Harold he looked terrible.
“Harold still wasn’t sold on him when we broke camp for the fall trials, but that October John won the National Shooting Dog Futurity. Then a few weeks later he won the Grouse Futurity, and Harold decided we’d better keep him. Everyone remembers him for his great style, but to me the qualities that stood out were his bird-finding ability and his intelligence. He was a really smart dog, and he passed that along to his offspring.”
I had the opportunity to chat with Sherry several times over the course of the summit, and every one of them was a delight.
“What you have to remember,” she said one evening after dinner, “is that when we worked for the Smiths we didn’t have a big string of dogs. Most years we’d raise one litter of puppies, occasionally two, so we had to make the most out of what we had and look for any little ‘something’ that would give our dogs an edge.
“For example, you know how in the seminar they said that for maximum endurance dogs should be fed 24 hours before exercise? Harold and I figured that out on our own, just by trial-and-error. If we had a dog that was drawn to run at ten o’clock Wednesday morning, we’d feed it at ten o’clock Tuesday morning. That helped our dogs run a good strong hour without any let-down late in the heat.”
At some point I mentioned a comment I’d heard from a former professional trainer, a man who’d spent time with the Rays as an amateur, that had always struck me as very wise. “The most important thing in training,” he’d said, “is knowing what not to do.”
A sly smile crossed Sherry’s face. “Who do you think he learned that from?” she asked. +++
Note: Contact Sherry Ebert through her website, sherryebert.com.
Photos courtesy of Purina.