Sable Timeline-page3

1984
ASC Board: President-Jeanne Meister, Hugh Spacht, Louise Milner, Al Davies, Muriel Barber, William Burson, Dick Duding, Elizabeth Durland, Al Grossman, Jean Peterson, Carroll Stewart, Ruth Baumgartner, William Brice, Billie Ballantine Hayes, Jo Friesen. Standard Chair-Ron Fabis.
In August 1984 the Board of Directors issued a Standard "Clarification" that read:
"Due to numerous letters and inquiries, your Board of Directors has been attempting to resolve the question of the Sable colored Cocker Spaniel. It has been a tangled issue being more procedural in nature than Genetic.
The Board, after weighing all of the information available to it, has come to the conclusion that the Sable and Sable/White Dogs have never been included in our Standard. The Parti-color revisions were designed to clarify the markings for Tri-colors and not to allow Sable/Whites to be shown.
Since the Standard is designed to be a logical description of our Breed to Judges and the Fancy, it is illogical to prohibit the Sable from being shown in the ASCOB Variety and look the other way while they are shown as Particolors. Most of all, this issue has caused major confusion in the ranks of our Breed Judges.
The membership on two occasions rejected the inclusion of the sable color in the ASCOB Variety of the Standard. Therefore, since the intent of the standard revision was to clarify the Tri-color description and since the only opportunity the membership had to vote on the Sable was in the ASCOB Variety and it was rejected, then we do not have a Standard change which would allow a Sable to be shown in any Variety."
It appeared to many members of the ASC that the Board had over stepped its bounds by effectively revising our Standard without a vote of the membership. Many ASC members (myself included) wrote to AKC to question how this happened. In a letter* to Mr. & Mrs. Peter Morrow the AKC (Mark T Mooty, Secretary) responded thus:
"Thank you for bringing our attention to the American Spaniels Club’s letter dated August 8, 1984.
For your information, if asked, The American Kennel Club would not approve any club sending out interpretations or clarifications of the standard for its breed. If a standard needs such clarification, then it should be revised. As I am sure you know, the By-Laws of The American Kennel Club explicitly place the responsibility to initiate any revision which “shall not be changed in any respect until the wording of any proposed change or changes first has been submitted to the Board of Directors of The American Kennel Club and its approval of the same has been obtained."
Also in 1984 in the "Report of the ASC Bulletin Editor"* (then Bill Gorodner) in the Annual Report read in part:
"This past year has seen three Bulletins issued. There should have been four but I received no Club input of information for a fourth edition. I believe the work I had done to open up the Bulletin pages to my fellow members was nearly subverted this year when I submitted the third Bulletin to the Club Secretary for publication and mailing to the membership. A letter to the Editor from Frank Summerside on sables was included in “Letters to the Editor”. A few weeks later I received a phone call from Club President Jeanne Meister who told me that Margaret Ciezkowski sent the rough draft of the Bulletin to her (never done before) and Miss Meister felt with all the letters she had received on the sable issue that the matter should be handled at a later date and that Mr Summerside’s letter should be deleted from the Bulletin. I agreed at the time. However...
After our phone conversation I thought things through and wrote Miss Meister offering to do a fourth Bulletin devoted entirely to the sable question. Because I had already written an editorial on how I felt about sables I stated that the fourth 1984 Bulletin would have no editorial comment from me. Miss Meister replied that the matter would be covered at the meeting in January 1985.
I feel very strongly that I made a grievous error permitting the Club Secretary to ‘edit’ and censor the ASC Bulletin for me."
I have not been able to find any mention of those letters being discussed at the January 1985 Annual Meeting. What did those letters say? Where have they gone? Why were they not discussed at the meeting? Or were they discussed in Executive Session where minutes are not taken?
And from the 1984 *Report of the Standard Committee (in part):
"This committee will research the genetic background of the sable and sable/white cocker spaniel and then issue an information bulletin to all members subject to Board approval."
I have not been able to find any reference to the Standard Committee’s research of the sable color in cocker spaniels and have found no evidence that any research was disseminated to the membership. In personal conversations I had with Dr Frances Greer during this period of time, she spoke of having sent her findings to the Board. To my knowledge her report was never made available to the membership.

From the AKC Dog Book 1985:
A lacing of black hairs over a lighter ground color. In Collies and Shetland Sheepdogs, a brown color ranging from golden to mahogany.

1986
ASC Board: President-Al Grossman, Hugh Spacht, Betty Schachner, Muriel Barber, William Burson, Richard Duding, William Brice, Elizabeth Durland, Billie Hayes, Carroll Stewart, Ruth Baumgartner, Tom O’Neal, Henry Jones, Monty Barber. Standard Chair-Ron Fabis.
For the first time a ballot was provided to vote for sable AND sable/whites. Once again the membership was asked to vote YES-to allow sable in the ASCOB variety and sable/white in the Particolor variety or NO to provide for a disqualification of the sable and sable/white cocker spaniel. 1612 ballots were mailed. 1051 returned and counted. YES-636. NO-415. Once again neither option passed with a 2/3 majority of the returned ballots.