Shaggy Dog Tales Retold
posted in General |Gun Dog Magazine, December/January 1997-98 p. 52-56
A shade shy of appreciating the refinements and nuances of field trialing, “the shags” and their owner-handlers came to hunt!
In showing they are strong, naturally cooperative gun dogs, an array of Llewellin setters became the vanguard in an effort to restore this type of longhaired pointing dog to public popularity.
While enjoying what was essentially a bird hunt under judgment, this unique group of English setters (called “shags” by the fanciers of smooth-coated English pointers, who win most of the trail trophies) demonstrated why the recognized strain to which they belong were the original field trail dogs. Then, for decades in the U.S. they were the only “breed” of setter serious and gentlemanly gunners considered worth shooting over.
The Llewellin setter is unique among bird dogs. It is the only “strain” within a breed classification officially recognized as such by a dog registry. The American Field’s Field Dog Stud Book indicates in its records when an English setter is of the Llewellin strain. To be registered as a purebred Llewellin, a pup must trace its bloodline without outcross back to at least one of a half-dozen progenitors called the “Six Pillars.”
Llewellins were running in field trials since the sport’s inception right after the Civil War. Long before World War I, they defeated and supplanted “native” setters as premier bird dogs and became favorites of hunters between the two “big wars.” After World War II, the strain seemed to “peter out” as a separate entity, although thousands of today’s “;lain” English setters possess traces or an abundance of Llewellin genes. It is claimed that 18 or the 24 setters to win the National Bird Dog Championship were pure or predominantly Llewellin.
On April 4-6, 1997, a bunch of bird hunters who have stuck with pure Llewellins trough thick and thin and who are responsible for a revival of interest in the “original” English setter held a convention near Tiskilwa, Illinois. It was strictly for llewellin setters and was considered by some as the first national Championship for llewellins.
Technically and actually, it was the first Llewellin Setter Classic.
Despite frequent lapses in manners, as indicated, these longhairs hadn’t lost any of their desire to hunt, ability to find game birds or willingness to retrieve what was shot over them. It was too much of a fun bird shoot to tickle the palate of a field trial purist. But any hunter or pro trainer could not avoid being impressed by the raw potential of eager dogs, which bored into near tornadic winds and sheets of cold rain in an unremitting search for birds.
These Llewellins proved what is always claimed by setter owners (that despite soft, sweet dispositions, these are top gun dogs when the going gets tough) by not only searching for but finding game under very adverse conditions.
The entry was limited to 38 dogs. They came from New Jersey, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan. Every handler hiked for a full hour in this walking, shoot-to-retrieve event over continuous courses. No dogs ran out of gas. But the tank was low for quite a few handlers. All did their own shooting and were afforded a lot of it, on both wild and released quail and pheasant, if they hustled up to their dogs in time.
Hunters there essentially to shoot birds rather than handle dogs under judgment could not have found a better opportunity. It would be difficult to find, anyplace, a better training, hunting, trialing venue than Rocky Run Hunt Club; about 700 acres of rolling and steep hills, brushy washes and creek bottom breaking up flat farmland, some cropped, some fallow, heavily salted with recently released game, residual survivors and natives.
These hard-to-beat grounds were made available by owner Sean Derrig, a Niles, Illinois contractor. Ramrodding the first Llewellin Classic was Joe Noe, a long-time Llewellin setter fanatic and resident manager of Derrig’s club.
Noe and his wife Lorri judged the trial and proved Llewellin owners are as impervious to discomfort as the dogs they champion. Not only were weather conditions at times so sever that good horses refused to head into the wind, but Joe Noe was up and judging despite a still-healing broken right shoulder and a broken left forearm, the result of an equine mishap.
Noe’s concept was to put on the kind of test that would showcase the abilities which stimulated U.S. sportsmen about 125 years ago to import and breed thousands of Llewellin setters, probably reaching a pinnacle with hunters during the two decades between World Wars I and II.
Today, only pedigree separates the Llewellin from the “other” setters, although experienced Llewellin men might guess right a few times on the basis of physical characteristics. But when this observer was a youth in the 1930’s, any heavily ticked black and white setter was almost sure to be identified as “a Llewellin” by anyone posing as a knowledgeable sportsman. For some old-timers, Llewellin and English setter were synonymous.
Although Llewellins can lay legitimate claim to being the first field trail dogs, (setters, starting in 1896, won the first dozen National Bird Dog Championships), they were left in the lurch when the emphasis changed from counting bird finds to highlighting class and style displayed on point, coupled with far-reaching “ground races,” perceived quality rating over numerical quantity.
When trialing eventually became a game in itself, influenced at least equally by the “must win” attitude and prestigious recognition as by concern about the practicalities and application to actual bird hunting, sportsmen who hunted with LLewellin setters apparently were among those who quietly went their own way. And with outcrossing to “field trail blood” when efforts were made to compete with the pointers, purebred Llewellins were virtually obliterated.
But about 30 years ago interest was revived in the pure Llewellin by some serious hunters, not a few of whom were concerned with the demise of a special kind of bird dog their daddies and uncles relied upon. One such hunter was a Conway, Arkansas farmer turned antique dealer, Alfred O. King, Sr. King may be the most active promoter and purveyor of Llewellin setters in the world and has traveled as far overseas as Russia to obtain breeding stock that traces back to the strain’s origin. King was a very active participant in the Classic event, running both a one-year-old pup and a 7½-year-old veteran.
The bird-shooter orientation of a lot of Llewellin handlers is going to have to be tempered to conform to the field trail emphasis on proper dog work, rather than deadly shooting, if the “shakedown” introductory trials and the completion of two more Classics are going to lead to championship recognition.
Whether his professional aplomb was admired or envied, or even recognized, a tough, collected and indefatigable 42-year-old pro trainer put on the best demonstration in the trail of what the combination bird hunt and field trail seemingly envisioned by Llewellin folks should be all about.
Joey Hilton of Rock hill, South Carolina toured the course with six different dogs during the trail (on the last day hiking hard for four hours) helping his dogs look good. His know-how and efforts (besides his own dogs, he “helped out,” substituting at the last minute for a couple of other handlers who couldn’t stand the gaff) were rewarded by winning the trail twice.
An explanation of this seemingly impossible accomplishment will also serve to point out some head-butting and compromising that will have to be accomplished before The Llewellin Setter Association firms up its still experimental and tentative rules governing Llewellin trials.
Hilton dogs “won twice” because Hilton’s Rambling Bill, in the first brace on the trial’s first day, had more bird work than any subsequent dog in the trial. Under a point system of judging, finding more birds than any other dog makes a high score inevitable and Bill racked up a total score (retrieving, backing, ground race and handling are also figured in) of 1,315 to be declared champion of the first Classic event.
But taking nothing from Bill’s “top dog” work, the class dog of the trial was an 11-month-old phenom, Scott, also trained and handled by Hilton. Had the trial been run under the subjective judging system, Scott would have won. Judges are permitted to factor in their opinions of how well the dog did its job and give consideration to mitigating circumstances (weather, time of day, bracemate behavior, etc.), thus influencing the decisions they make.
Scott moved well, hunted independently but responded to minimal handling and never kited off aimlessly, was going as strong at the end of his hour as at the start, was more mannerly than any other dog in the trial, had good, clean, crisp finds, pointed and backed with stylish intensity, then completed the job with quick retrieves to hand. But his clean finds didn’t match in number the multiple encounters Bill had with birds, possibly because of time a day and weather variances, featuring a chill, gale wind.
This should illustrate the difference between two “scoring” or “judging” concepts; at their extremes the point total system employs a scorekeeper to rate dogs, strictly objective and mandatory. The “spot ‘em and call ‘em like you see them” system cloaks its judiciary with a mantle of unchallengeable subjectivity. Both systems are far from perfect. In setting up their breed specialty trial rules, the Llewellin folks find themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Historically, when Llewellins were the hot field trial performers, judges just kept score. But this bean-counting was eventually supplanted by pure, virtually unfettered judging of wider-ranging dogs followed on horseback. Nostalgically, Llewellin fanciers would like to go back to the point system, equating it with the on-foot gun dog they envision and the casual rules of the hunting field excusing sloppy behavior.
At the same time, it wasn’t lost on anyone who watched all the dogs that the smooth, stylish performance of an advanced-beyond-his-months young dog made Scott the dog they’d like to take home to enjoy hunting with as well as to use in a breeding program. To the practiced eye, it was also obvious there were other dogs shown that had the potential to approach, perhaps surpass, the stunning display put on by this pup…if they had the talent to put some control and manners on them.
Without a clear-cut consensus of which way too turn, anyone attempting to judge Llewellin specialties will be put in an impossible situation, torn between trying to tip-toe between strength in numbers on one side and appreciation of quality on the other. this has and will cause some dissension in the ranks. But that’s part of the growing pains in a new organization. A stanch adherence to principle combined by good judgment and compassion, as demonstrated by Joe Noe, seems a good indicator that things will work out.
It resulted in DeCamp’s Dashing Maggie becoming the “Cinderella” story of the trial. Robert DeCamp of North Vernon, Indiana, got tri-colored Maggie as a seven-week-old puppy from Straight Creek Kennels. Now into her third year, DeCamp was thrilled by the opportunity to put her in a field trial. But she almost didn’t get to run.
He had hitched a ride to the trial. Partway through the trial his “transportation, ” disgruntled by a refusal by judge Noe to alter judging procedure in mid-stream, decided to pack up and take his dogs home, without waiting around for DeCamp to have his chance with Maggie.
When DeCamp apprised judge (and trial chairman) Noe of the situation, Noe said, “You are here now. You paid your entry. you have a right to run. Stay and bring your dog up when called. I’ll guarantee that you and your dog get home if I have to drive you there myself.”
DeCamp’s Dashing Maggie was cast off, hunted hard and well enough to run up a 1,220 total score, second only to Hilton’s Rambling Bill, and was declared runner-up to the champ in the inaugural Llewellin Setter Association Classic trial; much to the delight of a pure amateur owner whose enthusiasm for his first bird dog bubbled over when he declared, “I just love this dog!”
The judging team gave “pumped up” trial rookies lots of leeway, letting them enjoy popping birds even though their dogs picked up on the projected excitement engendered by an incentive to kill as many birds as possible because, in the scoring system, each retrieve earned a dog as many points as each stanch point on game.
Apparently some hunters envisioned winning the trial by chalking up the most retrieves. In one instance, a handler had seven or eight birds in his bag and hadn’t fired his shotgun! His hyper-dog hardly broke stride as he snatched up live birds and delivered them. Another handler shot at everything that flew, whether or not it was pointed. When the judge attempted to instruct them in the basic niceties of field trial conduct and scoring, the answers boiled down to “Look at all the points we’ve scored with the retrieves,” and “This is how I do it when I’m hunting.”
There was little basically wrong with the dogs themselves. They found birds and they fetched birds. The natural ability and potential was obvious. But so was lack of human understanding and training effort. All dogs “earned” some scores because the judging system required judges to keep books; in contrast to the “call ‘em as I see ‘em” concept where judges quit looking at, or order up, dogs not in contention when they don’t meet an arbitrary standard or performances established by dogs previously run in the stake.
The husband-and-wife judging team, despite familiarity with the ins and outs of traditional trialing, was circumspect and tolerant in jotting down scores for untrained dogs. Any “cheap points” they may have given in evaluating ground race and handling can be justified. All dogs applied themselves and none ran off.
Besides the dogs mentioned, others caught the eye and made their mark as good bird dogs. the trial’s best brace was made up of two white and black male Llewellins: King, owned and handled by Jeff Redden of Blytheville, Arkansas; and Razor, owned and handled by Gary Gatewood of Evansville, Indiana. Other notable dogs included two stylish youngsters, 19-month-old Kim, owned and handled by Joey Hilton’ and 18-month-old Bailey, owned and handled by John Curry of Mt. Morris, Michigan, whose high style had everyone buzzing. Jasper, another nice Hilton dog, and Ranger, owned and handled by Charles Pennington of Sand Hook, Kentucky, also inspired appreciative comments.
It seemed clear that, as long as they hunted, the judges let each dog and handler set their own range; a wise procedure in a walking fun dog event. Regardless of distance form the gun, all dogs applied themselves, not letting up from start to finish, and responding for the most part to the minimal handling required.
By sending the dogs out over a challenging natural course for an hour at a crack, the trial committee successfully simulated a jaunt on an ordinary day’s hunt, testing the application and endurance of a gun dog followed on foot. Once the procedures are stabilized, events of this kind ought to prove interesting to many bird hunters looking for an incentive to stimulate them to better train their dogs and an opportunity to extend the enjoyable time spent afield shooting birds over a well-trained gun dog.
A hunter in the market for a practical, pretty and enjoyable pointing dog (if the interest and native ability of the majority of dogs in the first Llewellin Classic are any indication) can consider a Llewellin setter a darned good bet. This “different” dog might on its own produce some shooting for a poor and indifferent trainer; a passable performace for a casual trainer and the kind of show a “gentleman’s shooting dog” will put on every time out if he’s worked, directed and hunted by a knowledgeable diligent trainer.
What’s in a Name?
If you are to believe both past and present fans of Llewellin Setters, they are different from generic English Setters if for no other reason than the fact that they boast a “brand name” derived from their British originator Purcell Llewellin, who improved on what might be called the original English setter, the Laverack setter started about 175 years ago by Edward Laverack.
On or about 1825, hearing of some good “belton” setters owned by a Rev. A Harrison in Cumberland, England (”belton” refers to a commingling of white with other solid colors, giving a roan effect and referred to as “blue belton,” “orange belton, ” etc.) Laverack bought a female, “Old Moll,” and a male, “Ponto,” who were littermates.
Laverack mated Ponto and Old Moll to each other and established a setter “breed” which preceded the Llewellin and which took his name. Because a wealthy Welshman, usually referred to as R. Purcell Llewellin, drew almost exclusively at first on Laverack setters when he was developing the “field trial setter” named after him, considerable confusion clouds the symbiotic relationship between Laverack and Llewellin setters. But there was no basis for the frequent assumption that Edward Laverack and Purcell Llewellin were bitter arch-rivals. They were not.
Quite the contrary. Laverack’s book, The Setter, which is the first written record of the setter breeds then existing (1872), was dedicated to Llewellin, who had begun experimental breedings utilizing Laveracks and black and tan (Gordon) setters and red (Irish) setters. Eventually, based upon some experimental outcrosses by other sportsmen who introduced “coarse blood” to the “blue blood” of the Laveracks, Llewellin concluded that infusing strong shots of peasant genes was the way to overcome some rattle-brained tendencies in the purebred Laverack aristocrats.
he went all out and bought up all the dogs he could get his hands on by 1971 who were related to a pair of gun dogs, Duke, owned by Barclay Field, and Rhoebe, owned by Thomas Satter, after ascertaining that those two dogs seemed to produce the best results when bred into the royal Laveracks. The revered Duke/Rhoebe/Laverak breeding was begun by Llewellin in April, 1971 and the first) of what was to become the most famous strain of bird dogs ever bred) to reach North America was a pregnant bitch, Dart.
Her pups, Paris, Maude and Blanche (sired by Leicester), represented the Llewellin setter breed’s debut in public field trials by winning placements in a trial near Memphis, Tennessee in 1875. The second and third Llewellin setters to be exported were Dora and Rake. Although Llewellin himself referred to his strain as “field” or “field trial” setters,” Americans who bred in great numbers these Duke/Rhoebe/Laveracks that came over from Great Britain dubbed them Llewellins after their originator….and the name stuck.
Considering Llewellin’s experimental breedings, it is more than likely that Gordon and Irish setters were factored into early Llewellins. it seems more than coincidence that what purportedly “was the handsomest brace of setters that ever crossed the Atlantic” would be named “Druid” and “Queen Mab” who were, respectively a priest and a fairy in ancient Celtic religion and foklore.
Neither was used extensively for hunting. But Druid became one of the “Six Pillars” from which all pure Llewellins emanate, on the basis of what his offspring contributed to field sports. The other five well-springs of the breed were Gladstone, Count Noble, Leicester, Lincoln and Rake.
Also referred to as “the Sextette,” the six named setters all were imported or arrived as part of a still-to-be-born-litter in the womb of a bitch bred in the British Isles. The setters that evolved in North America from these specific dogs became known as “American Llewellins” and represented dogs bred strictly for their field qualities with little consideration for the “show quality” Brits considered at least equally when evaluating sporting dogs.
I recall, as a boy, hearing old bird hunters peak disdainfully of Laveracks as “bench dogs” and the perception that there were two kinds of English Setter, Laverack and Llewellin, and only the latter rated with hunters. As a “breed” the Laverack setter disappeared, although I suspect the Laverack exists not only in the background of the Llewellin, but also in the cumbersome beauties paraded at dog shows, perhaps even in some strains of heavy-headed, deliberate working “grouse dogs.”
While American-bred Llewellins predominate, part of the strain’s resurrection is due to interest in imports from other lands, often on the presumption that those strainns are “purer” than those dogs from the practical American breeding. Probably the leading line of imports is the Dashing Bondhu line.
Because the amount of verifiable information about this strain is so extensive, the above compendium is only the tip of the iceberg regarding Llewellin background. As a labor of love, Alfred O. King, Sr. has compiled an impressive array of Llewellin lore in a book, The Llewellin Setter, Origin & Historical Development. Anyone seeking additional details about the dogs, the Llewellin Setter Association or the national Llewellin Gun Dog Trail Club should contact King at 27 Gapview Road, Conway, Arkansas, 72302, phone 501/336-8510