Judy Aycock
Judy was born in Princeton, New Jersey, where her father was a professor at Princeton University. When she was a child, the family moved to the Chicago-area where her father became president of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. He had been involved in developing tests for the military in the 1940’s and this eventually led to his involvement in designing the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Judy attended public school in the Chicago-area where she was involved in sports. She was named to the Mayor Daly Youth Foundation track team, competing in the 800 meters. She graduated from UCLA, earning a degree in psychology and history. While in college, Judy became a serious tennis player and for a brief period, she competed on the tennis circuit.
Judy grew up with dogs and as a child, competed in AKC obedience trials with the family poodle. After her brief tennis career, she continued in obedience competition with Shetland Sheepdogs. While living in Los Angeles, she became interested in the possibility of training dogs for field trials after realizing it was much more of a challenge then obedience. After doing some research, she discovered a famous retriever trainer in Escalon, California, named Rex Carr. After a few visits, Judy was hooked and knew this was what she wanted to do with dogs.
Subsequently, she bred her Labrador female to August and Louise Belmont’s dog FC-AFC Air Express. This union produced her first titled retriever, Dual Ch. Trumarc’s Triple Threat “Punt.” At this time, she purchased another lab pup, Trumarc’s Raider. After training both dogs for a few years while living in Escalon and working with Rex Carr, she decided that she could only afford to campaign one dog. She decided to sell Punt and keep Raider. When it appeared that Punt might be returned to her, she let someone look at Raider. Ultimately, both dogs sold and she was dogless.
Raider had sired a litter of pups, one of which belonged to John Folsom who worked for Rex. His name was Honcho and Judy admired his tremendous desire. She asked John if he would sell Honcho and they agreed on a price. Through Judy and Rex’s tutelage, Honcho became the 1976 National Open Champion at the age of 3.
Judy has trained many accomplished retrievers, most notably the 1984 National Amateur Retriever Champion and the second all-time High Point Field Trial retriever FC-NAFC Trumarc’s Zip Code. She is the first person to win a National Open and a National Amateur with two different dogs. She has won numerous double headers with many different dogs and has given judging and training seminars in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
