English Setter owners?

Hi, I don't own an English Setter, but I just wanted to say how beautiful your dog is.  I just LOVE hunting dogs.  But I am a little biased because I have a Brit.

Oh Yeah!  See my avatar.  Her name is TrudyBlue and she's a little over 2.  We do agility and obedience.  She is quite the character.

YourEs puppy is gorgeous.  What a lovely color! 

I have an English Pointer, too.  She's a wonderful dog but doesn't have the personality that Miss Trudy does.

Is yours a Lavorick?  Trudy is a Llewellin.  Quite a fire cracker.  She thinks that she is absolutely God's gift to mankind.  

I had an Aussie/English Setter mix for five wonderful years. I don't have any digital photos of him to share but the English Setter was very strong in him. He was happy and prancy and boy did he love his food! The vet thought he was about fifteen when he died of renal failure. I still miss him. [sm=angel.gif]

Wow - an Aussie-ES mix.  That would be super.  Did you know that there is some ES in the innitial development of the modern border collie in order to get the stalking behavior and hard eye that both exhibit?  Watch a border collie control sheep and you will see similar behavior to a setter point and stare. 

My pointer and setter will point at each other to innitiate wild crazy play.  Their styles are completely different. 

For 15 1/2 years we had a wonderful English Setter/Lab mix (Mick).  He had a long Setter like tail.  his coat laid flat like a Labs, but was about 2 inches long and soft. 

Actually, not all ESs have really long hair.  Llewellins (field setters) can have flat single coats with just sparcely  feathered tails, bloomers and legs.  Trudy is in the middle.  She has a beautiful coat this year and the hair on her tail and bloomers is really long and slightler wavey.  Not nearly as profuse as a Lavorick (bench setter).

Yes, he's a Laverack (bench) ES.   I'm seeing alot of grooming in my future.  I love your girl, she's very cute.  I really like your bird dog yin yang.
 
Nice to see someone doing agility with their ES, how have you found the agility training process.  They have tons of personality don't they?

Oh Yes!  She's a character.  She loves every body. 
 
She's very intense on the agility course, but I have to be careful not to push her too much.  She will shut down and start sniffing or looking for birds and such (as if to say "talk to the paw".
 
Are you planning to show your setter?  What is his name? 
 
The Lavoricks require more grooming, but they don't have a double coat that you have to keep up with.  It's just a matter of keeping all the feathering tangle free.
 
I do a series of illustrations called Trudy & Grace, and the Yin - Yang is my favorite.  It is so fitting! 
 
Here is onethat I did when my daughter had her twins.
 
 

Beautiful work!  I didn't realize it was your own.
 
His name's Amos, soon to be Reidwood's Almost Famous.  (was almost a show dog)   I know what you mean about the 'talk to the paw' trick.  Push him too hard in obedience and he disappears into setter la-la land. (I can't hear you ... despite what the hearing test says)
 
The plan is to eventually show in Rally and Agility.  I've done some gentle introduction to tunnels, A-frames and low, low obstacles. He really likes the tunnels and A-frames.  Obedience needs alot of work and he needs growing up time before really stating to work on it though. 
 
He's going to have a LOT of coat, but he's going to be beautiful.  Right now he just has to recover from his neuter on Friday.  Poor puppy spent Sat. morning on the sofa with us; head on a lap, softly whining his troubles to us.  He's recovering great now though.

My little girl is just 2 1/2 and is just now getting mature enough to be somewhat consistant.  You are smart not to push the jumping and keep it fun over easy obstacles. 

They take awhile to go through adolescence.  Every once in awhile, when Trudy was younger, she would have a burst of "Sparkling Star" in either obedience or agility class, but would make me humble if I expected it again too soon.  []  Now, she is showing a much better work ethic.  I'm really looking forward to trialing her in the fall. 

My husband and I laugh about how we will miss her antics when she becomes a mature lady dog. 

My boy WAS marvelous. That's funny what you say about setter la-la land, that describes him to a tee if I tried to pressure him too much. You should have seen him when I had him instinct tested on sheep (when I still wasn't sure what he was). He trotted round and round the ring, tail high and nose in the air - "I can't hear you!"

some ES in the innitial development of the modern border collie in order to get the stalking behavior and hard eye that both exhibit?

Actually, the eye was developed over a very long time - have sources from the 1700s that discuss eye - they call it setting the sheep, not because it came from setters necessarily, but because that's what they called that behavior. Some eye in British sheepdogs seems to have come from a Nordic/European curly coated type of farm dog that came over in the 1400s with the Merino sheep. The setter as a type of hunting dog seems to have developed sometime after that, though certainly there were crosses back and forth. We have a letter from George Washington written while he was away from Mount Vernon, which begs his kennel master not to breed Washington's prized setter bitch to the farm sheepdog or "terriors".

The dogs that showed the most similiarity to setters in coming to a complete stop and getting "stuck", were actually not desireable at all (and still aren't today). Setters WERE bred in, but the reason was to put more birdiness in, to produce a dog that could work the master's sheep by day and poach his game by night. Such dogs, as you can imagine, really didn't play any key role in the modern breed. Modern Border collies were shaped by the trials and most of these all purpose dogs didn't perform up to the exacting standards of those trials, their stock sense being "watered down" and the eye being too strong.

Very Interesting! 
 
One thing that I find interesting is that my setter and pointer are technically bread for the same purpose and the breeding that goes into them is so different.  Pointers have hound in them and, even, a bit of bull terrier to increase tenacity!

It is very interesting what goes into breeds bred for the same function. Look at how many different herding breeds there are and how extremely different they are. Can you believe BCs, Collies, and Beardies all worked the exact same sheep in the exact same area 100 years ago?

I keep meaning to tell you how much I LOVE the drawing in your sig line. Do you do the drawings in pen and ink and then scan it? What format do you use to scan it?