Fashion has made the Irish setter a red dog, whereas there used to be
many more index dogs of Erin red-and-white than red. Fashion in this
case has been the dog show, but if that had been all the result of its
influence the author would have been content. It is the Irishmen who are
most concerned, and the fact that the Irish setter is the worst colour
in the world to see in a Scotch mist can be well understood not to
matter in Irish atmosphere and manners of thinking. Between 1870 and
1880 the dog shows had attracted most of the handsomest dogs in Ireland,
and many of these were very good workers.
From time to time an Irish setter has been good enough to compete with
success at English field trials, and although on occasion such an animal
has carried all before it in its stake, neither in England nor America
has one of the breed ever won a Champion Stake, so that probably it will
be considered fair to say that poor competition has brought the Irish to
the front when by chance they have come out first at field trials. The
author has seen and shot over many charming red setters, but he has
never seen a really great dog of that breed—that is, not a dog in the
same class with the pointers Drake and Romp’s Baby.
The best Irish setter the writer ever shot over had the peculiar luck of
always finding birds when, by the manners of other dogs, there appeared
to be none about. Many a time has a bad day been redeemed by letting off
this beautiful red dog, a son of the field trial winner Plunket. To some
good judges of dog’s work the field trials appeared to be at the mercy
of this setter; but he had a peculiarity often to be found in those of
his race—he would only hunt for blood, and consequently out of the
shooting season he was as useless as an ill-broken, careless puppy. He
would run up birds without appearing to smell them before they rose, or
to see them afterwards. Instead of waiting on your every wish, as he did
in the shooting season, he took no interest whatever in the proceedings,
and you could not cheat him into believing business was meant by the use
of blank or any other cartridges. It is easy to defend such a
characteristic in individual or race on the ground that it shows their
sense. So it does, no doubt, but it also shows that the questing
instinct is weak in them, and there are good reasons for preferring it
to be very strong. The breaking season is the spring, and a dog that
will not hunt for all it is worth then cannot be broken. As a matter of
fact, only few Irish setters ever are highly finished. More than half of
those that have come to field trials have been unsafe in the abode of a
hare. At the same time, those that are taken to spring field trials hunt
well enough, but of course these are a very small proportion.
In popular opinion the greatest fault is that the race carry low heads;
at the same time, this carriage does _not_ invariably mean bad “noses.”
The writer has seen an Irish setter turn a complete somersault over its
own nose, which it ran against a stiff furrow of a fallow field; but
this one had a good nose, although not the very best. The author was
judging one year at the National Field Trials with Mr. George Davies, of
Retriever fame, when Colonel Cotes’ fast and good pointer Carl was sent
off against an Irish setter belonging to Mr. Cheetham. The latter never
lifted his nose in hunting or in drawing to game more than would miss
the buttercups, but nevertheless, from behind, he again and again found
partridges that the other dog, much nearer, had failed to detect. Carl
was very fast and the Irish setter very slow, but the former was beaten
pointless.
There is a fiction that Irish setters are faster than other dogs, but
this is not the case. It is much more usual to see them out-paced, as in
the above-named instance. It may be that they generally have so merry a
stern action that they look to be bustling, when in fact their actual
getting over the ground is not fast. Their low noses cause them to take
very narrow parallels when they are careful, so that if they are judged
by the ground they actually cover or beat they are usually of less
capacity than their only moderate speed suggests. They ought to last
well at the pace they go, but although stamina is said to be another of
their strong points over English setters, the author has known many of
the latter breed that could do more work than any Irish setter he has
seen. These have included some of the best Irish setter winners at field
trials. But years ago there were Irish dogs that could go a good pace
and stay well. They were bigger dogs than those which win at shows now,
and looked more like workmen. It is to be feared that breeding for show
points has evolved a bustling and busy rather than a business-like race.
They are now smaller, shorter, especially in the quarters, and more
upright in the shoulder, than the best of the old sort. There is not now
anything at all like Palmerston and Kate, winners at Birmingham about
the same time. The last-named was probably as well made and as
setter-like as any dog could be, and to compare the present show setters
with her is like comparing a polo pony with a Derby winner. At the
spring field trials of 1906 only one Irish setter was entered, and that
one was far from being even moderate in its work.
There may be dogs of the old type hidden away in Ireland, and if so they
are much more worthy of attention than those which for so long have been
bred for show points. The best Irish setters the author has seen for the
last ten years are those of Mr. Cheetham. This gentleman kept them for
grouse shooting in the Lews, and as his shooting was late in the year,
when the heat had departed, they were admirably suited for the purpose.
The opinions given are of course based upon comparisons of the breed
with the very best of other races of setters and pointers. There is one
point, however, in which the Irish setters seem to be the inferiors of
all others—namely, the large proportion of inferior animals bred,
compared with the small number up to a fair English setter working
standard. This remark has reference to the natural ability, and not at
all to the difficulty of breaking the breed. The latter charge against
them is true also, but only because their excitement is greater than
their love of questing. Mostly they would rather chase a hare than point
a bird. It has been said of them that they want breaking afresh every
year, but that has not been the experience of the author, who has
invariably found that a thoroughly broken dog is broken for life, of
whatever breed it may happen to be.
Irish breaking, however, has not always been very thorough.
It has sometimes been said of the _old_ dogs of Ireland that they
required half a day’s work before they were steady. In that case, they
would require similar renewal of breaking every day, and the author has
made the observation that such dogs are too wild all the morning and too
tired all the afternoon to be a pleasure to shoot over.
But they are not all hard to break; some of those which are not too
excitable are very collie-like in their intuition of your wishes and
their anxiety to obey them.
It is noteworthy that the Irish have always held their field trials in
the autumn.
An old writer says that the English claim theirs as the true English
spaniel, whereas the Irish claim theirs to be the real true English
spaniel. This is not very informative. The dogs alluded to were of
course both setters, but of what colour we are not told in respect of
the Irish dog.
The author shot over the celebrated field trial winner Plunket for
several seasons and ran him at field trials, but after he had turned two
years he was little use in the spring, whereas he won well in the
autumn, when game was shot to his points. In this he was similar to a
much better dog, his own son, already referred to. Plunket was a fast
dog, and his boldness and beauty in going up to game was quite
remarkable, as he would draw up to birds at racing speed, as if he meant
catching them, but stopped suddenly and in time. Then, when they ran
away from his point, the moment he was ordered to draw on he would again
dash forward, and again locate his game with equally sudden points. But
the majority of good English setters at that time could out-stay him,
and particularly the Laverack setters Countess and Nellie, with which he
often worked, could have killed him. Mr. O’Callaghan’s setters were
rarely good enough to go to field trials, and although two of them won
there, they were very lucky to do so. Perhaps these dogs deteriorated
less than any other breed that were bred for show, or perhaps it would
be safer to say they declined in work slower than others, but there is
no doubt that they were on the down grade, not only in work but in true
setter appearance. That they were as _pretty_ as any dogs could be at
one time is freely admitted, but they had lost three-parts of the scope
of Palmerston and Kate, and their character of work was spaniel-like
rather than setter-like—in fact, just what their looks led one to expect
they would prove to be.
Unfortunately, the author has never seen the Irish field trials: the
reason is that the English pointers have usually proved better than the
Irish setters, so that there seemed to be nothing novel to see by going.
But it is very difficult to believe that the show Irish setters that
usually represent the breed at English trials are the best workers of
the race. The character of the breed when the author first saw it at
work in the sixties was distinctly setter-like, and not spaniel-like.
There has been a great deal of controversy upon how the dark-red colour
arose. Mr. John King, who knew more of Irish setters than any other man
known to the author, affirmed that red-and-white was the original
colour, and the general opinion was that those of the last-named
markings were the most easy to break. All the most setter-like Irish
that have come before the author have had more or less white upon them,
and as colour certainly denotes blood or origin, and the manner of
hunting of the whole-red dogs is spaniel-like, it does not seem to be
unlikely that the springer spaniel, the colour of a blood bay horse
without a white hair spoken of by a Suffolk parson in the middle of the
eighteenth century, may have had a good deal to do with the origin of
the red Irish setter. At any rate, no other setters or spaniels of the
colour can be traced in the early history of what was then the English
spaniel, or the setter.
The same writer says that the English spaniels (setters) were of two
colours, “black-and-tan” and “red-and-white,” so that there is another
possible origin of the whole-coloured red dogs. Black-and-tan setters
often produced a red dog, but not the Irish dark rich red. This red
puppy in the litter might have arisen from an Irish cross, but, on the
other hand, it might have been a blend with the lemon-and-white coloured
English setters, or the result of puppies following the markings of one
ancestor and the colour of another. Those that the author bred from
black-and-tan parents had no dark hairs to suggest their origin, but
neither had they the rich chestnut of the Irish setter. The writer’s
experience of breeding dogs inclines him to the belief that the
spaniel-like tendency of the breed, now that it is selected for all-red
colour, is proof not only of its spaniel but probably of a springer
origin. Their excitement, their merry low-carried sterns, and their
noses on the ground, speak like an open book to one who has bred and
watched the breeding of all races of setters for forty years, and has
assured himself that selection for colour is the automatic selection of
character usually found with that colour.
The late Mr. Laverack was of opinion that crossing his black-and-whites
with the lemon-and-whites of the same litter was in fact equivalent to
cross breeding. However, he lived to introduce red dogs in his breed, so
that the former kind of crossing does not do everything. There is no
doubt that size and fertility suffer by this method, but however often
the incestuous breeding is repeated such a thing as a blend of the two
colours was almost unknown—that is to say, when a liver-and-white one
did, very rarely, make its appearance, Mr. Laverack himself traced it to
a former cross with the Edmund Castle breed of liver-and-white setters.
There was always a difference other than colour between the
lemon-and-white and the black-and-white brothers and sisters—a
difference which suggested two distinct sources of origin of not at all
related breeds. Consequently, if the red-and-white has not been entirely
eliminated from the Irish setter, and if they sometimes do revert, the
author would expect the reversions to be more setter-like and less
spaniel-like than the present show Irish setters, and to be more like
Dr. Stone’s Dash and the Kate and Palmerston already mentioned.
Since writing the above, the author remembers that on one occasion he
bred from an Irish dog and a black-and-tan bitch, with the result that
the puppies were liver-coloured. Yet when two black-and-tans were bred
together thirty-five years ago, there were usually a couple of red
puppies in the litter showing neither liver, black, or black tinge, or
even dark-red colours. This does not support the theory of a
black-and-tan origin of the whole colour.
The collie-like sense of the Irish setter has been referred to, and a
case of the kind may be of interest. In 1873 the author was shooting
along the shores of a loch in Inverness-shire, hunting a brace of
setters, one of which was a red Irish puppy. A grouse was killed that
fell out into the lake, there about a mile wide and several miles long.
The dogs dropped to shot, and there lay while the party waited to make
sure that the wind would not bring in the grouse, for we had no
retriever or any setter that had ever retrieved. It became evident at
the end of a few minutes that the grouse was slowly drifting away, and
the order was given to continue the beat, leaving the bird to its fate.
But the young red setter was no sooner on its legs than it darted
straight to the lake, jumped in, swam to the grouse, brought it to land
and there dropped it, shook itself, and started to hunt for more live
birds.
That was the first and also the last bird it ever retrieved, although it
was constantly encouraged to make further attempts. Of course this looks
like reason, but that is questionable. At any rate, it was startlingly
smart, and about as unexpected a canine performance as could be
conceived.
Another of the breed was so smart in finding wounded game that he ended
as a retriever in Yorkshire grouse driving, and was said to be better
than several retrievers, although he never lifted a bird, but merely put
a foot on the grouse and waited to be relieved, when he would go quickly
and straight to the next wounded bird, and so on until all were found.
It is probable that even wild grouse do not often fly from a dog unless
they associate him with the presence of man. When using a parti-coloured
team of black-white-and-tan setters with some lemon-and-white dogs, the
author has noticed that wild grouse soon got to expect the man when they
saw the dogs, and he has found that by using a red dog then, the birds
behave differently, probably mistaking the Irish setter for a Scotch
fox. At any rate, when they ought to have been very wild according to
locality and season, grouse have been noticed to treat a red dog with a
certain amount of resentment and walk away from him, flicking their
tails as they move, plainly expecting the rush, and unwilling to fly
before it came. What they obviously did not expect was that there was a
man with a gun.