"Dif'er'nt Ain't A Bad Thing"

By Randy Lawrence

This really isn't my story to tell.  I just can't help myself.

Firelight Moondance is a friend of mine.  Lynn Dee Galey had marked her as "special" from the whelping box on, so I was thrilled when 'Dance spent some time down here in southern Ohio a year ago, helping me through a hard time during my father's decline, entertaining me with her quirky antics in exchange for some kindergarten bird work experiences we had together.

"Quirky" plays well on this old farm.  In fact, it's almost an entry requirement, starting with the guy whom the horses and donkeys and mules and pigeons and cattle and dogs think works for them.  'Dance fit right in.  

So don't expect me to be unbiased about anything about her, from her pedigree to her name to the somewhat unorthodox way she's gone about coming into her own.

But today Lynn Dee Galey sent me a photo of her youngest in-house Firelight.  Seems they were walking one of the sandy two tracks near their home in Michigan when this happened:

Lynn Dee writes, " Walking up the road, and 'Dance went on point.  Allowed me to walk up, calm and composed, and the grouse flushed.  I didn't want to harass the birds, and I suspect there were chicks somewhere around, so I praised her and picked her up.  But good job, 'Dance; good job." 

Lynn Dee Galey's trademark Vermont Yankee reserve aside, this is pretty small beer in the grand scheme of bird dogs.  My old friend Nelson Groves, the godfather of Southern Ohio grouse hunters, would have snorted and said, "Well o' course she stood there." (To Nelson, dogs didn't point; they "stood there.")  "That's what her ol' mother did, and her daddy did, so that's why I hired her."

But 'Dance is one of those "dif'er'nt" youngsters, with tons of precocity in one instant, and then goofy, almost willfull, adolescence swamping her the next.  Time and the kind of bird exposure that Lynn Dee will provide her, from the High Plains to the Lake States, will tell the tale, but you'd be a fool not to bet that Lynn Dee knew what she was doing when she kept 'Dance from a particularly promising Firelight litter.

Heck.  'Dance has known it all along.  Just ask her (she WILL talk to you).

Me?  I was late to the party.  But she had me at the first time she leapt to do a Suni Lee-worthy backflip and stuck the four-footed landing, all in the name of her conviction that she could indeed get enough air to catch a homing pigeon steaming high overhead en route to the loft.

"That's some weird (stuff)," said I to myself.

Naw.  'Dance is but a tad quirky...which makes her just my kind.

Sgt. Hulka, Andrew Marvell, And Early Setter Training

A week or so ago, a gun dog compatriot forwarded me a very sober, very detailed training description texted by an acquaintance with a (very) young dog.  My buddy is a rather staid, stoic veteran who was startled at the scope of his earnest correspondent's "program" with a puppy.  He presumed a reply was expected, but he confessed, "I'm just not sure what to say."

Me?  Lemme at 'im.  I either wanted to run and rescue that young setter or at least channel my inner Sergeant Hulka from the film Stripes and type to this person,  "Lighten up, Francis."

The two gravest errors we make with well-bred gun dog prospects are (a) not doing anything, (b) doing too much, too soon, and (C) colloquially speaking, bein' clueless about who's learnin' who what.

I get it.  We bought a BIRD dog, not a LhasoShizuDoodle.  We want to do birddoggery stuff - you know, with birds and pointing and gunfire and fetching and and and...

There's time for that.  Trust me.  There's time for that.  

But tempus is fugitting on other really important primary school matters.  How many folks do we see with young gun dogs who start doing field work being dragged to the session by an over-hyped English setter that doesn't know how to walk on a lead?  How many young dogs have gone into their first hunting season without a reliable recall, who don't look to their Person for partnership, let alone leadership?

When novices (and some who should know better) get gulled into asking me what they should be doing with their dog (hehehehe), they are always disappointed, mostly because the "work" I think they should be doing seems so boring:  Crate training.  Walking their dog on a lead.  Helping the dog be a good citizen in unfamiliar surroundings, with other people, with other dogs, cats, llamas, iguanas, etc..  How about reliably coming in when called...the first time?  Bonding, bonding, bonding, which means spending time doin' life together.  Learning together.

I'm stunned at how little time some would-be handlers really want  to spend with their dogs.  It is the human partner's fundamental obligation to understand her dog, which means spending the time and patience and thought it takes to establish that critical piece.  It's on us to understand how our dog sees her world;  it's on us to establish communication that runs both ways, which, frankly, should be the only kind of communication in which we're interested between others of our own species, let alone our dogs.

Every minute we spend with our dogs is a chance to learn something about them and about ourselves.  Our job is to take best advantage of that opportunity.

We do to young gun dogs exactly what our culture has been doing to our young people for years - never asking enough or asking too much too soon.  Only by being invested, by observing and being thoughtful, can we know what it is our learning partner is ready to tackle next.  That's the danger of many school curricula and, dare I say, cookbook dog training books and videos.  Such programs get applied without taking into account the individual.  That way frustration and heartache lie.

Lighten up, Francis.  The great advantage of not being a pro is your time isn't money in this venture.  This is your recreation.  So...DO that:  Re-create yourself as a collaborative learner with your dog, a deal where you learn how he communicates and try to get better at understanding that vernacular.  Learn how he receives communication from you which goes 'way, 'way, 'way beyond our insipid "commands" to every imaginable nuance of body language and vocal tone.  Establish rapport.  Roles.  Expectations.  Accountability.  Respect.  Love.

Live with your dog.  Learn your dog.  Support that dog early and often in walking at heel, accepting confinement, coming when she's called.  Do that with expectations commensurate with the dog's age and experience and opportunities.  There's world enough and time to do birddoggery stuff, Andrew Marvell.  For now, lighten up and learn to learn together.

The Off Switch (Too)

by Randy Lawrence

Ever since Lynn Dee hit "publish" on the last blog post, "Breeding The Off Switch," I've been fretting.  I felt as if I wasn't able to express just how rare and difficult it is to produce setter puppies that hunt like speckled demons, but can be civil, in fact, chill at home.  I think I made it clear such qualities were desirable;  I'm not sure I acknowledged just how rare all of that is in the kind of dog I want to hunt.

For my sport, I want a fast, bold dog with fire and verve and courage, one with the conviction to range likely cover as widely as necessary for us to find a bird to kill, one he's pinned, cornered, overawed into sitting tight until I can stagger up alongside and put it to wing.

When my dog's on point, I want to see the same fever in him that I feel right then in me, like he could almost burst into flames so hot is the bird taint on him.  I want him to look so good, so BillBleepingHarndenFoster molten gorgeous that there's always a dilemma of camera shutter vs. trigger.

And if it's the trigger and we get lucky, I want him to streak to the fall, maybe even pounce on it, and bring that bird back high and handsome with the same expression to him that I know I'm wearing.

I've written it before:  We ain't so cool when we get it right.  Not do we make apologies when we party.  He wriggles and wags and acts the fool.  Heck, I've been known to bust a move, too, even now when "bustin' a move" risks an arrhythmic, geriatric white guy bustin' somethin' that might fall apart any minute now anyway.

October Blue Doc

When we move on, it's together.  I trust my dog.  I trust whom I've become to him in all the hours we've spent together since he came home to the farm.  So he goes like thunder, but with the kind of handle that no eCollar or Iron Check Cord Nazi can put on him, the one that has him checking in without coming all the way in en route to another likely stretch of cover.  He swings by because he wants to know where I am because he trusts me, too...

...and that's the handle we were able to forge because he came with that Off Switch.  I wanted him with me because he was easy and smart and beautiful.  I could take him fishing.  He eats dinner with me.  He checks the cows with me and only occasionally gives the barn cats a rip.   He goes into the dog-friendly feed store and cannot stand it until the clerks made a fuss over him.  He's quiet in his crate, he's quiet in the kennel, but best of all, he's quiet at the foot of my bed at night where he and the rest of my misbegotten menagerie keep the Dark Night away so we can all sleep.

Lots of folks can breed a pretty dog.  A number of people can breed a kind, mellow, lovable pet that makes into a bird dog of sorts.  But when Cliff and Lisa Weisse did their homework, looked over dozens of outside studs, then had the courage to outcross to (Heaven Forfend!) a Llewellin named Houdini's Man O' War, they just happened to birth a true paladin in October Blue Doc.  

Houdini's Man O' War

Lynn Dee Galey putting Doc to her superb Firelight females has seemed to enhance those qualities, something I know she does not take for granted.  And me?  I see the Doc/Firelight sons, daughters, and grandpups starting to find their way and...well...I can't help it.  I've still got a move or two left to bust.

Firelight Cool Hand Luke

Breeding The Off Switch

 

Doc

By Randy Lawrence

It was the kind of text I love to get, a report on a puppy with a bit of October Blue Doc in the pedigree:

"Friendly, affectionate, loves to run in the woods, thought pigeons were terribly exciting but so calm.  Just walked around, and when we sat at the patio table he laid down near us and chilled.  Owner keeps telling me that he has never had a puppy so...composed."

A photo was sent, showing the puppy lounging in his open crate - his crate - watching his folks go about their business.

Only time and chances on wild birds will determine what kind of gun dog this little guy will be, but the gratifying thing to me is that he is already keen to cast and hunt, already fired up about birds, but came equipped with an "Off Switch," that makes him an easy keeper, the kind of dog that his people want to be around in their home life.

Granted, his people are doing a good job.  The pup has a clear sense of Place, not just his crate, but his Place in the family.  They've helped him learn to learn, they've rewarded his sensible behaviors, in fact, catered to them.  In short, they've built on what his Mama and Daddy gave him.

Pointer breeder Robert Wehle marketed his dogs as "genetically trained."  Some of that was, to be honest, marketing.  But what he meant was that he strived to produce puppies with sense and sensibility, in short, the Off Switch we're talking about here.  His expression was, "They know when school is in session."  They know when it's not, as well.

That's not a small thing.  Too many of us settle for bird dog prospects that have but one button:  "On."  Or maybe two:  "On" and "On-er."  They get it honestly, from parents that have so much "game" to them that they can't face it.  They are up and down.  They pace.  They are constantly into things.  They have no sense of place.  

In short, they are a nuisance.  Those are the youngsters that are too often consigned to a kennel where all of that energy just burbles, bubbles, and boils over.  What passes for conscious thought is "Anywhere but here," something that carries over into the field.  

My writer friend John Rogers once said, watching such a dog bouncing off the chain link,  then disappearing over a far field edge, "Aye, but thou hast been too long in kennel pent."

When it's school time, such animals have focus issues, energy issues.  They are distracted by anything and everything.  One such dog we had to work in a big enclosed pole barn, just to get any obedience work done, because every tweety bird that went overhead sent him into paroxysms of nonsense.  He made a grouse dog, of sorts, but never really managed to get "all of his stuff in the same shoe."

"Give me drive in my bird dog," people say.  "You can always take some of that out, but you can't put it in."  Puh-leze.  What good is all of that "drive" when I have to hunt a youngster half a day before she settles into the business of hunting with me rather than pinballing about the woods like a jackal on acid.  If I have a well bred youngster from the best, proven wild bird stock, collected enough to get around in front of me in good country, game contacts will instill all the drive we can use, and more.

October Blue Doc went hard.  He ranged to cover and conditions.  He pushed coverts with a predator's verve and intensity, but in his time with me, he never forgot we were out there working together to put birds up for the gun.  

But Doc had that Off-Switch.  At home, he was a companion farm dog, the one who rode shotgun into the village post office and cadged treats from the nice ladies in the bank drive-through.  He slept through guitar rehearsals and lounged on the porch while I visited with my Amish friends.  He loved affection but never made an issue of it.  He wanted to be where he could see me, but he didn't need to be on top of me to be reassured that he was The Man.

I fear that I write too much about Doc in these blog posts...but I won't apologize.  I feel as if it's OK to brag on him because he wasn't mine.  Cliff and Lisa Weisse bred him, and he was Lisa's hunting dog.  When he came into his retirement with me, Doc had known for a very long time exactly who he was.  From our time together, he knew what he was to me, too.  The puppies blending his blood into those established performance Firelight genes carry themselves in much the same way...and I never get tired of hearing about it.

The Off Switch: October Blue Doc entertaining guests at home.

Puppies Are Like Baking

 

      

 

Puppies are a bit like recipes in baking.  The "science" is in gathering all the ingredients and following steps of a recipe;  the art comes from adding a touch of this and that to make the recipe your own.  To produce bird dogs that can be identified as yours.   I confess that I have never gotten over the excitement of seeing how they turn out!

Here are a few of my recipe -> results from over the years….

 

A Modest Proposal

 

Photo from an early '50's Ryman Kennel Sales Brochure

By Randy Lawrence

The following are the most important lines in one of the most important modern books on gun dogs in general and English setters in particular.  The authors knew it, too:

"If we accomplish nothing else with this writing, we hope to get the point across that there were no Ryman setters produced after (George) Ryman's death."  ~ The Real Ryman Setter - A History by  Walter A. Lesser and Lisa M. Weisse

This begs the question some of us have been asking each other for a very long time:  "Then why do we persist in using 'Ryman' in describing many of the contemporary strains of English setter?"

Ask the hardest hunting, most experienced, widely traveled and discriminating pointing dog men and women you know who assiduously steer clear of any breeding with any mention of "Ryman" bloodlines.  They will tell you that the "Rymans" they've seen were overly large, long-bodied, low-tailed, phlegmatic plodders who worked (too closely) to their handlers, mostly because they couldn't go any harder and wouldn't care to if they could.

"Pretty dogs," they'll say, damning with faint praise.  But when they pronounce the word "Ryman," they do so as if both syllables were coated in caster oil.

Such dogs wouldn't have left a bad taste in George Ryman's mouth.  Had they been in his kennel, they would abruptly have left this earth as part of the unbending, expensive, and appallingly ruthless culling program he practiced in order to breed the unicorns that bore his name. 

Ryman was a bit of a unicorn himself.  In the early days he won field trials.  He won dog shows, including, according to Lesser and Weisse, three placements at Westminster with not only an English setter, but a Gordon setter and a Pointer as well.  He hunted for the market, and built his kennel in prime game country.   To keep his dogs belly deep in wild birds, Ryman made extended trips to Quebec for grouse and woodcock leaving God knows how many dogs in the care of his wife Ellen, constantly testing his breeding against a most uncompromising standard.

Ryman's bloodstock was proven on wild game at home in Pennsylvania and in Canada.

We should be grateful that Ryman was also a flamboyant entrepreneur, because it is through surviving pieces of his advertisements and sales brochures, contemporary profiles by sporting writers, and a priceless interview Ryan Frame conducted for a 1999 Pointing Dog Journal article entitled "Mrs. English Setter" that reasonable people can draw a clear picture of what George Ryman made into his life's work.

In a 1952 sales list, printed just three years before a brutally debilitating stroke virtually ended Ryman's active involvement with the kennels, is the famous description and photograph of a dog called Ryman's Birdy Anne, of whom Ryman writes "is a model in the setter type," a granddaughter of 1955 Field Trial Hall of Fame inductee Sports Peerless.  Weisse and Lesser's research has Ryman turning to Sports Peerless in 1939, the same year Peerless's son, Sports Peerless Pride, won the National Championship at Ames Plantation.

Sports Peerless (photo from "George Ryman's Breeding Program" at https://octobersetters.com/rymanhistory/breeding/) )

Sports Peerless Pride

A New York Times article dated Saturday, April 6, 1935, reports on Sports Peerless's winning run at Mount Holly, NJ.  The event was a "free for all" that was part of the English Setter Club's 35th annual field trial meet and Sports Peerless was entered by his owner, a future Hall of Famer named Louis Bobbit.  According to the article by Henry Illsley, Sports Peerless was the first English setter to win at Mount Holly in a decade.  Illsley described the winner's run this way:

"In his first race, Sports Peerless ran a brilliant ground-working heat, going wide and covering his country in approved style.  Coming in to the bird field, in each of which he stood up stylishly.  His bird work indicated intelligence and good sense."

Just as Ryman's breeding program drew from the speed and innate hunting ability of those classic Llewellins, so could he have been cribbing from Illsley's copy when he described Birdy Anne:  "...just five years old last August, steady hard worker, powerful nose, stylish as there be on point."  The photo of Birdy Anne that accompanies the description shows a close-coupled, shorter-tailed, powerfully built female, her physique belying Ryman's note of her weighing 45 lbs.  She stands intensely on point as a hunter in the background waits to walk up her bird.  The caption reads "A Perfect Ryman Setter."

Lesser and Weisse reference the 1999 PDJ interview with Ryman's former wife.  Ellen is quoted saying that she and her late husband favored  "short coupled" dogs with shorter tails that came to 9 o'clock on just above on point.  Ryman himself in 1951 wrote he was intent on producing "the DUAL TYPE (caps his): which means the kind that are fit to shoot over in the field on game, and the kind that are fit to look at or have about the home the balance of the year and be appreciated."

Weisse and Lesser provide a wonderful photo excerpt from the same '51 brochure showing seven dogs on the sales list, all of them boasting an athlete's frame, tight coats, an artist's model head (well...six of them anyway), and sensible-looking attitudes.  The weights of these dogs range from the mid-40's to 60 lbs.

Although allegedly Ryman "humanely destroyed" all but belton-marked puppies, the Llewellin  influence from his early outcrosses is evident in this youngster from a sales list.

That sort of setter athlete didn't survive Ryman.  Two years after George's death in 1961, Ellen remarried.  Carl Caulkins was allegedly a longtime aficionado of Ryman's setters, and he and Ellen kept the kennels going until 1975, when they sold out to the first of a succession of those trying to revive Ryman's work, as well as others who seemed more intent on cashing in on the old man's name.  

In fact, after George Ryman's stroke there were fewer and fewer dogs in the breeding shed with wild bird resumes, certainly none with the bona fides the old market hunter Ryman for decades gave his setters.  The dogs got bigger.  "Close working" became synonymous with slower.  "Companionable disposition" was more about lack of drive, intensity and tenacity than about the elusive "off switch" that makes some gun dogs more easily lived with year 'round than others.

Breeding a line of gun dogs may be as much art as science.  While Ryman's successors may have had the old man's palette in those pedigrees, they did not have the eye, the background, the technique or the talent able to consistently produce some of the most unique English setter birddogs in North America.  

Speaking of color, for as long as I have known George Ryman's name, I have heard the whispers about his "creativity" in pedigree registrations as well, following in the brush strokes of many 19th century breeders in a pastiche that included select Gordon and Irish setters (and perhaps the odd Pointer) slipped under the kennel fence to eventually blend into the acknowledged Llewellin matings.

All of that art was made on a canvas of wild birds, flocks of them, coveys of them, his Quebecois coverts stiff with them, sagging stringers of them good for photography Ryman could use in his brochures.  It was those grouse, woodcock, and pheasants home and away that informed Ryman's breeding practices, topped with his eye for proper working conformation that was as pleasing on the move as it was in repose.

When George Ryman's bird gun went still in 1955, it was a silent death knell for the true Ryman setter.

Within that in mind, perhaps it's time for those of us who prefer the same kind of dog George Ryman did to challenge ourselves to find a new way to describe our favorite hunting companions.  Maybe using the Ryman tag is nothing more than laziness, and surely confusing for those who have come to associate the name with a very different sort of English setter, one that is enthusiastically embraced by a cadre of fans but may have difficulty translating to the scarcity of game that is modern wild bird hunting. 

Rather than fight what is common perception among mainstream bird hunters (and the pretensions of those content to call themselves  "Ryman" breeders and owners), why not do what George Ryman dedicated his entire life to doing - finding ways to introduce a new generation of foot hunting gun dog men and women to yet another unique sort of setter gun dog built for the 21st century gamefields?  

Can we consistently produce generations of unicorns, smart, rugged athletes of healthy working conformation and coat? Dogs that can be conditioned to hunt sensibly and durably, regardless of conditions and cover?  Keen dogs that train easily and work efficiently in an independent, yet purposeful, biddable, and companionable way...all while retaining classic looks straight from the art of Maud Earl, Percy Rosseau, A.B. Frost or the great Edmund Osthaus, who painted portraits of many of the dogs in George Ryman's early pedigrees?  

That's a question that only thoughtful, discriminating breeding practices anchored to hunting in a contemporary wild bird reality can answer.

Meanwhile, let the old man's name rest in peace on a Pennsylvania tombstone.  May the rest of us celebrate a modern English setter gundog risen from his ashes.  

Post Script:

My admiration for the research behind The Real Ryman Setter: A History should be evident in this blog post.  The book belongs in the hands of anyone interested in English setter bloodline history.   

This blog post is offered up in good faith with the understanding that selection of a gun dog is as personal and as taste-driven as any other sporting activity.  As my grandfather was fond of saying, "Ever'body think like me, ever'body want your grandma."  Folks should have the dog that suits their hunting while maintaining integrity in how those dogs are portrayed.

Finally, several of the photos used above were gleaned from https://rymansetters.com/what-is-a-ryman-type-setter/ and https://octobersetters.com, a websites dedicated to the ethical breeding of setter gun dogs, two good places to learn more about the current state of "Ryman" affairs. While I will continue to quietly lobby against the rymansetters.com website name, I enthusiastically support the group's stated mission at https://rymansetters.com/our-mission/.

Sweet Firsts

 by Lynn Dee Galey 

Lynn Dee?  Lynn Dee?!!  I heard my hunting partner calling my name and realized that from 100 yards away he had not seen me go down when I stepped into the badger hole.  I had gone down in slow motion, gently tossing my empty gun into the grass nearby.  The tall, lush grass was warm and soft and had I not heard my name being called I might have lay back and relaxed.  But I waved my hand in the air and said “over here.”  “What are you doing?”  (Really??  What am I doing?!?)

The walk out from the truck had not been very productive.  A small group of sharptail had lifted several hundred yards ahead of us and flown over the hill into the horizon.  The dogs had hit the grassy draw and field well but without result.  As I rose and picked up my gun my partner said he was going to swing left toward a deep coulee that he could follow east back toward the truck.  I decided that I would go right and follow a brush filled draw that also led east.  As he and his two dogs dropped out of sight I called to my mother and son brace and headed out.

Sally was a savvy and experienced dog but Flint was just 10 months old.  The season had been open for only a few days and his bird contacts so far had been second hand. Showing that he was a natural at backing, he had watched as the adult dogs had handled sharptail and huns and had been part of the pack’s celebratory retrieves. But he had discovered that when you are running with 3 or 4 experienced adult dogs, claiming your own first finds isn’t easy.  

As I walked I caught glimpses of the brace ahead of me, smoothly weaving through and around the Russian olives that clustered in the drainage right up to the edge of the freshly mowed hay field.  When Sally didn’t show for several minutes, I dropped down into the draw and found her standing on point.  Flint swung in behind me and backed.  As I walked in several birds flushed and I managed to knock one bird down and Sally brought it in with her usual merry style.

From what I had seen, most of the birds flushed had gone long across the field. But at least one had flown east down the draw where we were headed.  The truck was less than ¼ mile away when I saw a motionless white patch through the brush ahead. As I came into view the breeders-heart in me skipped a beat and a small YES! whispered across my lips. There was Flint on point. Out in a clearing for all the world to see and admire.

My late, wonderful friend John Jensen once told me about the time that he won a skeet championship when he hit 3000 targets in a row but his opponent hit 2999.  John, I'm thinking that the pressure you felt on that last clay was about the same as I felt walking past Flint on that point.  His first bird on his own and so splendidly handled. Another Yes! was whispered when feathers puffed and the bird dropped. 

Flint has gone on to be a splendid and stylish hunting companion across many species.  But how special is the memory of that oh-so-sweet first bird.