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Gentleman,

Do any of you know of a kennel breeding true, hunting Irish Setters? I am helping a friend of mine locate a pup. Thanks for any input.

Kind regards,

No offense, but I would talk my friend out of it if I were you. I had an Irish Setter once and he was the worse disiplined dog I have ever seen. My buddy/neighbor had one and he had the same problem. If they get loose, and they will, you won't find him for days- guaranteed. Especially a male. A true Irish Setter will have a small white crest of a few (maybe as few as 6-8)white hairs on it's chest. That is one of the ways to prove a puebred Irish Setter. But mine got loose (usually by digging under our chain link fence) so many times and I spent so many days chasing him it wasn't funny. If I turned him out in the yard and didn't watch him, he would do nothing but dig, trying to get out. And when he got out, he would run for days and miles around area- sometime for weeks before he was seen again. It is definitely not a breed I would ever recommend to anyone I called a friend. If you ever see the movie, Funny Farm with Chevy Chase where his Irish Setter got loose and he would see it every few days, running, as it passed by the house- that is exactly what they do. If you haven't seen it- rent it and show it to your friend to show him what he can expect. I am not joking, it is the most beautiful dog there is, but also the most miserable, unruly, scheming, untrustworthy, stupid, useless, worthless dog in the world. There were so many times when I caught mine after chasing him for days, I wanted to put a gun to his head and shoot him. Or run over him with the car. And I would have if I wouldn't have had my small son, who was about four or five at the time. I spent many nights out in the snow at three in the morning chasing that dog, having to get up the next morning to go to work. So, if your friend buys one, he will find out. I promise you. Good luck with your/his adventure.

GP, much of what Jimmy says is true of many Irish setters. I had one that wasn't far off. However, there are people breeding hunting Irish setters. Try http://www.ironfiresetters.net. Good luck.

http://www.nrsftc.com/

This should get you started. Hunting Red Setters are a far cry from the bred for the bench Irish Setters.

Ken

I started rolling on the floor laughing my A$$ off when Jimmy mentioned that movie and that is the best part of that movie!!

And who's fault was that?

What does your friend have against Wirehairs? I had Irish Setter bird hunters from the time I had just turned three years old. I hunted the first dog's son until I was about 17. He was the best pheasant dog I've ever had. He was the only dog I've ever seen that could work in standing corn. I try not to hunt in corn, but my Dad liked it. I don't think I will go back, plan to die with a Wirehair. Bill Murphy

Dave, I have to agree one hundred percent with Jimmy.
They are as a whole one of if not the most undisciplined breeds my wife and I have ever dealt with.
I don't know what happened to the western Irish setter, too much show dog genes and not enough hunting dog genes through its breeding heritage. I've been told that the eastern Irish setter, Geno knows a whole lot more about the breed and breeding in Russia, is an excellant hunting dog with great instincts. But, be that as it may, many breeders have simply given up and started a whole new line called the Red Setter if I'm not mistaken.

I have a Brittany that I don't let out alone or she will run, run, run. I exercise her (hard, not just walking on a leash) 1-2 hours a day, and found that she tends to be difficult to discipline unless I work on it constantly and exercise her a lot. She is a fabulous hunting dog (we hunt > 100 days a year). I don't know about Irish setters, but I always thought dogs behaved better when tired out and that discipline was the master's responsibility, not the dog's.
Joe

After I got my divorce, in the middle eighties, he had run off from my wife (who had gotten custody of him in the divorce) and the dog was living with two women, who lived about two miles from me. He had been living there for about six months, and when I ran across him, I paid them $100.00 for the food and vet bills they had spent on him. I brought him home and kept him on my breezeway. One day, I came home from work and he had chewed through the aluminum framing on one of the screens in the window trying to get out. A few days after that I had him out in the back yard, so he could go to the bathroom and he slithered off while I was looking the other way and bang, he was gone. Three days later he jumped the fence in the two ladies back yard and they called me saying they had him. They offered me the $100.00 to buy him back and I ended up giving him to them for free and made an agreement that when I went by their house on the way to picking up my son for visitation on the weekends, I could stop and pick him up for the weekend also. About a week after that, he jumped their fence and was back down at my house, but I took him back to them. He spent his final years there and I saw less and less of him over the years. One day, I stopped in to see how he was and they told me he had died that winter. They were nurses, and since the ground was too cold to bury him, they wrapped him up in garbage bags and kept him in the freezer in their basement over the winter until the ground thawed the next spring. Then, they buried him in the back yard. They said they missed having him sleep at the foot of their bed and feeding him popcorn at night while they watched television. How sweet. While they were telling me this, I remembered the time when we first got him, when he was about 3-4 years old, I had come home from a midnight shift and went to bed and in my sleep, I could hear these loud noises. And after I woke up, I went downstairs and he had pulled the paneling off of our family room wall and chewed up half of the framing around the door. What a horendous monster. I still wake up screaming because of the mangy animal.