All Setters: Their Histories, Rearing & Training (A Vintage Dog Books Breed Classic - Irish Setter / English Setter / Gordon Setter): Vintage Dog Books

By Freeman Lloyd

Originally published in the early 1930s, this extremely scarce work on Setters is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. Vintage Dog Books have republished it, using the original text and photographs as part of their CLASSIC BREED BOOKS series. The author was a much respected dog man of his time. Terhune says of him, "I know of no other expert who has Lloyds's peculiarly complete equipment of blended education and genius, along all canine lines. With him dogs are an inspired life-study." Although he penned several important dog books, this is probably his best. The book's one hundred and twenty seven pages contain detailed Chapters on: Setters of Yesterday and Today. The Setter in Art. Early Llewellin Setters in America. English Laverack Setters in America. A Glance at the Past. Scenting Powers. Various Paintings of Setters. Training Setters as Gun Dogs. Force Training Collars. Temperament. Rearing. Reminiscences. Irish Setters. The Black and Tan or Gordon Setter. Points of the Gordon, English, and Irish Setter. Recent Setter Importations. All chapters are lavishly illustrated with vintage photos of famous English and American Setters and their use in dog art. This is a fascinating read for any Setter enthusiast or historian of the breed, and also contains much information that is still useful and practical today. "A dog quite unrivalled by any other of the canine species." Maxwell 1833. Many of the earliest dog breed books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. VINTAGE DOG BOOKS are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781444659702

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Importations

SETTERS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY

JOHN CAIUS (Anglice Kees, Keys, etc.), English physician and second founder of the present Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, England, was born at Norwich on October 6, 1510. He was physician to King Edward VI, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth of England. He died in London in 1573, but his body was brought to Cambridge and buried in the chapel under the well - known monument which he had designed. Dr. Caius was a learned, active and benevolent man.

A Setter: From the painting by Lucas Van Leyden, A.D. 1516

Among his literary works is De Canibus Brittanicis 1570, 1729. This was translated from the Latin into the English language by Abraham Fleming, and styled Of Enlishe Dogges, the diversities, the names and the properties. The dog called the setter in Latin Index is described as follows: The modern English spelling is introduced to simplify matters, and to make this text (1931) the more readable for the ordinary person. Dr. Caius, in 1570, wrote:

"Another sort of dogs be there, serviceable for fowling, making no noise either with foot or with tongue, whiles they follow the game. These attend diligently upon their master and frame their conditions to such becks, motions, and gestures, as it shall please him to exhibit or make, either going forward, drawing backward, inclining to the right hand, or yielding toward the left in making mention of the fowls my meaning is of the partridge (European, commonly known as the Hungarian) and the quail when he hath found the bird, he keepeth sure and fast silence, he stayeth his steps and will proceed no further, and with a close, covert, watching eye, layeth his belly to the ground and so creepeth forth like a worm.

Setters in France. After the painting by Francois Desportes, (1661-1743)

"When he approacheth near to the place where the bird is, he lays him down, and with a mark of his paws betrayeth the place of the bird’s last abode, whereby it is supposed that this kind of dog is called Index, Setter being indeed a name most consonant and agreeable to his quality. The place being known by the means of the dog, the fowler immediately openeth and spreadeth his net, intending to take them, which being done, the dog at the accustomed beck or usual sign of his master riseth up and by and by, and draweth nearer to the fowl that by his presence they might be the authors of their own ensnaring, and be ready entangled in prepared net, which cunning and artificial endeavor in a dog . . is not so much to be marveled at."

The Old English Setter as considered 130 Years ago. After the painting H. B. Chalon

The learned doctor who wrote the above 361 years ago, states parenthetically that the cunning and artificial endeavor had been brought about in the dog, because of his having been domesticated and brought up at home with offals of the trencher and fragments of victuals, which was another way of saying that a dog becomes all the wiser if fed from off his master’s plate, and the dog’s food might be like that of the rest of the human household.

As will have already been observed, the English setter was a trained or bird dog, in England, at a period that approximates four centuries of time ago. According to the Venationes, after Stradanus, published in 1578, spaniels were used for setting quails to be overdrawn with the tirasse net; and in Partridge Shooting and Partridge Hawking, by Hans Bols, A.D. 1582, there is a presentment of a large size, white-colored setter, actually lying down flat on his belly, setting a brace of partridges on a stubble ridge. These birds are being shot at while on the ground, the mounted shooter using a cross-bow weapon that was probably loaded with slugs. There also are falconers with hawks on their fists, running forward with short or dock-tailed springer spaniels of just the same type as the springers of today.

Joseph Man, gamekeeper-huntsman, Born 1700, and Setter. After George Stubbs

In the Bols picture the setter is a much bigger and larger bodied dog than the springers. Furthermore, the setter has the long and sweeping tail and is only approximately similar in the formation of the head to the spaniel. The picture shows how partridges were shot, with missiles from the crossbow, while the setter was called upon for his setting services in the matter.

On the other hand, when it was desired to take the game with a goshawk, the spaniel was called into use. If both sports had been carried on at the same time, the one would have interfered with the other, but we must be thankful to Hans Bols for giving us an example of the modes of the hunting, shooting, and taking of feathered game in the Sixteenth Century. Above all must we value the pictorial evidence that demonstrates that the setter and the spaniel breeds were in appearance quite different, four hundred years ago. Hans Bols was born in Malins in 1534 and died in 1593.

Nelson, a Setter painted by Martin T. Ward, (1831)

The English setter is supposed to have had its origin in the older of the land spaniels that had their homeland in Spain: Thus spaniel. Dr. Caius in his work (already mentioned) gave precedence to the "Spaniell, called in Latine Hispaniolus," which the common people call by one general word, namely spaniels. As though these dogs came originally and first of all out of Spain.

It will be remembered that Caius wrote in 1570. About twelve years afterwards Bols gave to the world pictorial matter that furnishes proof that the setter and spaniel were distinct in form; moreover, the tails of setters were left as nature gave them, while the sterns of the spaniels were cut or docked at just the same length as we are used to seeing them today.

Setter and Black Grouse by P. A. Reinagle (1749-1833)

Here is strong evidence, as I see it, that the setters of four hundred years ago were used for hunting in the open fields—stubble fields, if you like, where game fed as they feed now, while the spaniels were employed for hunting out the rougher and harder-to-work-in bushes and covers where pheasant, woodcock, and furred animals are mostly to be found. Such are their shelters during the daytime; their refuges from preying animals and birds.

There was no need to dock the tail of the setter which had his work to do in the open where he could swing his stern without injury to it from the thorns and prickles of the various small bushes and brambles. On the other hand, the fast wagging of the spaniel’s tail, in cover, would bring about serious injuries to the dog’s caudal appendage; and, therefore, it was only merciful to the spaniel dog that his tail be docked or cut off at a length where the outward swing of it would not reach further than the width of the dog’s hind quarters at the rump. Again, I would like to point out that the setters and the spaniels of four centuries ago were looked upon as dogs for different works, just as they are today. So why employ a setter for a spaniel’s work, or a spaniel for the tasks that only a setter or pointer may properly accomplish?

The English setter has a flat and silky coat. On the other hand, the springer spaniel’s coat is inclined to curl or wave. The spaniel is the better water dog and the curl in the hair of the coat, being caused by the oily nature of the spaniel’s skin, undoubtedly makes the spaniel more impervious to the coldness of the liquid element than the less oily skinned, flat-coated setter. The Llanidloes or Welsh setter, specimens of which I saw less than forty years ago, had white curly coats, and retained in size and appearance a good deal of the spaniel characteristics.

It is conceded by the older writers that the English setter came from the