More Field Trial Friends Remembered ~ Marshall Loftin

Marshall Loftin

Like Ed Mack Farrior, Marshall was a link to a glorious period for field trials and a consummate raconteur. He had also seen his share of hard times. He was not an admirer of The National Bird Dog Champion Association, for a very personal reason—its rigidity had cost him his best customer and field trials its most avid English setter sponsor, Dr. J. U. Morrison. 

Morrison had in the year in question a couple of qualified setters. Marshall mailed their nominations and a check for the entry fees to the secretary. They did not reach the secretary by the deadline, perhaps due to a delay in the receiving post office. The secretary was unbending. Morrison disposed of all his setters (quite a few) and never owned another. 

I met Marshall at the Quail Championship Invitational in 1996 where he judged and rode with him again there in 1998 when House’s Rain Cloud won the Championship for the third consecutive year, a record unequaled. In those six days  together on horseback Marshall gave me a graduate course in evaluating all-age performances and a PhD in field trial history and philosophy. I cherish those memories. I also saw Marshall several years at the Florida Championship, handling or promoting Kasco dog food, a job for which he had been recruited by its president Stan Howton, who came to Marshall’s camp on the Johnson Ranch in South Dakota. 

In his second judging assignment at Paducah in 1998, Marshall taught me a valuable lesson in evaluating all-age performances: Don’t be quick to throw out your best endurance performance for a bobble. You can read all about it in John Russell’s The Invitational Champions (2018) on page 346. 

Marshall served as a mentor to handler Fred Dileo and welcomed him also to his camp in South Dakota for summer training where Marshall rode with him training and Marshall‘s wife Myrtle mothered him. 

Marshall was also a fox hound aficionado and judge of horseback hound trials. His stories of trading fox hound breeding knowledge for bird dog conditioning insights with legendary trainer Clyde Morton were priceless. He had many bird dog field trial stories and told them with the skill of a professional stand-up comic. He trained and handled from the 1940’s through the 90s and handled in the old way, riding close ahead of the judges and never riding wildly to chase his entry. Training from Mississippi, his notable dogs included Monte Bello Peggy and Kreole, among many others. 

Marshall was also a great judge of field trial horses and advocated smaller strong ones for their ease of hauling. The pair he brought to Paducah were the envy of the gallery. 

Telephone conversations with Marshall were delightful, always filled with inside gossip and insights on human nature. He coached youth baseball over a quarter century.  

Marshall was elected to the Field Trial Hall of Fame in 2002 and died in 2021, survived by sons Bill and Stony. His wife of six decades Myrtle predeceased him.

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