English Setter - History

History

The English Setter was originally bred to set or point upland game birds. From the best available information, it appears that the English Setter was a trained bird dog in England more than 400 years ago. There is evidence that the English Setter originated in crosses of the Spanish Pointer, large Water Spaniel, and English Springer Spaniel, which combined to produce an excellent bird dog with a high degree of proficiency in finding and pointing game in open country. The modern English Setter owes its appearance to Mr. Edward Laverack (1800–1877), who developed his own strain of the breed by careful breeding during the 19th century in England and to another Englishman, Mr. R. Purcell Llewellin (1840–1925), based his strain using Laverack's best dogs and outcrossed them with the Duke, Rhoebe and later Duke's littermate Kate bloodlines with the best results. Today, you still hear the term Llewellin Setter; in 1902 the Llewellin Setter was given separate strain status in FDSB to put a stop to misuse of the Llewellin name. Only dogs whose pedigrees showed the Duke-Rhoebe-Laverack and Kate bloodlines were allowed to be named a Llewellin Setter and in 1996 the International Progressive Dog Breeders' Alliance and registry gave them FULL New Breed recognition for the first time. Field-bred English Setters are often mistakenly referred to as "Llewellin". However, only pure bred Llewellin Setters may be registered as Llewellin Setters.

With time, Laverack bred successfully to produce beautiful representatives of the breed. The first show for English Setters was held in 1859 at Newcastle upon Tyne. The breed's popularity soared across England as shows became more and more widespread. Not long after, the first English Setters were brought to North America, including those that began the now-famous Llewellin strain recorded in the writing of Dr. William A Burette. From this group of dogs came the foundation of the field-trial setter in America, "Count Noble", who is currently mounted in the Carnegie Museum at Pittsburgh. At present, the English is one of the most popular and elegant sporting breeds, often grouped with its cousins, the Irish and Gordon Setters.

The field type & show type English Setter look very different, even though they are the same breed. Field type setters are often smaller and are seen with less feathering and usually more distinctive spotting than show type setters. Both traits are beneficial in the field: less feathering makes getting burrs out of their coat easier and the spotting makes them easier to see in the field. For this reason, in the English Setter breed, compared to other breeds, there are very few Dual Champions (dogs that have completed their show & field championship titles).

English Setters have been among the premier breeds since the formation of the American Kennel Club. Along with eight other Sporting breeds, they were among the first pure breeds accepted by the Club in 1878. In fact, the very first dog registered with the AKC was an English Setter named Adonis. The breed's health problems may have contributed to its sharp decline during the past 10 years in its native country of the United Kingdom. In 2012 the breed was listed amongst the Vulnerable Native Breeds as only 234 puppies were registered. The breed is still fairly well represented in Italy, where it is popular as a working gun-dog. Even in Italy, however the breed is in sharp decline, going from 20,999 registrations in 2002, to 14510 registrations in 2011.