Ellsworth Gamble – Legendary Commander of the Ring

By Amy Fernandez

Let’s face it. The judging business has been suffering through quite a dry spell in recent years. Nothing highlights that sad fact more drastically than a little walk back to the days when this sport had so many great judges; we’ve forgotten half of them. For instance, remember Ellsworth Gamble? Back in the day he truly was a legend in his own time. Veteran Saluki breeder Mary Dee McMinn tells us that Gamble called it like he saw it. “He was in command of his ring and you followed his procedures to the letter. Instead of gaiting your dog down and back, he would have you walk it, which made perfectly good sense to the seasoned exhibitor,” she recalls. Yeah, well, maybe not so thrilling if you’re looking to hide a crummy topline, but it was his ring, take it or leave it. He rewarded what he liked without hesitation or equivocation, and this she remembers in vivid detail. “He was known for putting up excellent puppies to huge wins, and I was fortunate enough to earn a five-point major on a beautiful red Saluki puppy under Mr. Gamble at the Del Valle weekend. It was truly an honor and a win I shall never forget.”

Gamble was part of that post-WWII demographic scramble that redefined the sport and brought it to mainstream popularity. Although he was not a big guy, he was wiry and lean with an unforgettably rigid demeanor that came with his military heritage. A WWII paratrooper, in an October 30, 1975 New York Times profile, Walter Fletcher recapped his inauspicious start in the sport in 1946. As an Army lieutenant, Gamble’s catastrophic injuries in a Jeep accident earned him a medical discharge and a dire prognosis of six months to live. “I felt a dog would be good company for me in my last days,” he explained to Fletcher. Being an exacting, methodical sort of person, Gamble, who heralded from Ohio, went to the top for advice on this decision. “I went to Dr. Leonard Goss, who was dean of the veterinary college at Ohio State, where I had been a student before entering the service, and he gave me an Irish terrier,” explained Gamble.

After adjusting to that harsh medical news, Gamble moved to the San Francisco Bay area with his newly acquired Irish Terrier pup in tow. “To the surprise of the doctors, I not only passed the six month mark but, at the end of the year, was well enough to show my dog at Golden Gate. It was the first time in the ring for either of us, and we walked out with the Best of Breed rosette,” explained Gamble in his NYT profile. Now, science has provided empirical evidence confirming what we’ve known all along; dogs are good for your health.

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Posted by Alex on Jan 22 2019. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.