5.2 Collection of Blanche Saunders, Helen Whitehouse Walker, and dog obedience materials, 1910-1980

Helen Whitehouse Walker and Blanche Saunders were the pioneers of dog obedience in the United States. In 1931 the Poodle Club of America was formed, with Helen Whitehouse Walker as its founding Secretary-Treasurer. That same year she made her first fateful British import, Nymphaea Jason. The brown Standard Poodle became the foundation sire of her famous Carillon Kennels. In 1933, Ch Whippendell Poli of Carillon became the first Poodle to win the Group at Westminster.

Meanwhile, Walker had also become interested in the Obedience Tests featured in her English dog magazines. In the summer of 1933 she contacted kennel clubs, breeders, and exhibitors with the proposal that an American rendition be held that fall. The first All Breed Obedience Test was held at her estate Bedford Hills in Mount Kisco, New York. The following year she imported Tango of Piperscroft, C.D.X., who had already been trained by his esteemed breeder Grace Boyd, and traveled to England to study the sport.

In the fall of 1934, Walker and Tango of Piperscroft came to visit the promising applicant of their job posting for a kennel maid. Maine native Blanche Saunders had graduated from Massachusetts Agricultural College with majors in animal husbandry and poultry raising. With her poodles in Saunders's very capable hands, Walker concentrated on convincing the American Kennel Club to acknowledge Obedience as a competitive field. She published the booklet Obedience Tests – Procedure for Judge, Handler, and Show Giving Club. In early 1936, AKC granted recognition and approval, with the first licensed tests held in June.

Walker and Saunders then set their sights on the American public. Most famously, in 1937, they remodeled a Buick to fit three dogs in the backseat and hauled a 21-foot trailer across 10,000 miles in 10 weeks to perform demos. Recalled Saunders in The Story of Dog Obedience, "The ringside was crowded as everyone was anxious to see the 'two crazy women from New York with the trick Poodles,'... People were enthusiastic and their applause lavish. Part of this may have been due to the Poodles' fancy hairdo, but in much greater part it was due to the thrill of seeing [dog] Carillon Epreuve work in Obedience." In 1939, Saunders designed an exhibition at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and Walker joined the AKC’s newly created AKC Obedience Advisory Committee. Requests soon pooled in from hospitals, training clubs, Scout troops, and more.

Saunders became the face of dog obedience as it swiftly grew in popularity. She conducted demonstrations at Rockefeller Plaza , the Polo grounds, the old Grand Central Palace, and Yankee Stadium, before a crowd of 70,000. Her book "Training You to Train Your Dog," first published in 1946, was a stalwart bestseller well through the 1970s; it was followed up by nine more books, in addition to six widely dispersed black-and-white educational film reels by the same name. For many years she ran The Carillon Poodle Shop in Manhattan's East 50s, taught classes in New York sponsored by the ASPCA, and officially took over the Carillon prefix from Walker in 1943. She was the subject of an extensive profile in The New Yorker in 1951, and was named Gaines Fido Dog Woman of the Year in 1946 and 1958.