Setting a Standard for Setters
posted in General |Published in The Journal Star, Sunday, August 28, 2005
As a religion student, Joe Noe spent long hours studying the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Llewellin.
The latter may not be familiar. But spend a day with Noe on his McDonough County farm and you’ll learn all about the book of Llewellin—or more specifically the gospel of Llewellin setters.
One the most desirable and dominant bird dog in the coutry, Llewellin setter lapsed into obscurity following World War II. Not for Noe, though.
Since a chance meeting in college, Noe, 61, has bred and trained Llewellins in hopes of restoring luster to this legendary strain of English setter.
“The are the purest, oldest strain of setter known, ” Noe said. The finest, too, he added.
“What’s amazing about these dogs is they are your best friend and your hunting companion. They can stay in the house and get along with kids. But they also go out in the field and perform,” Noe said. “And I’ve never seen anything beat them as far as nose.”
Since starting his Shoeleather Kennel as a religion student at Milligan college in northeast Tennessee, Noe has placed puppies in nearly every state as well as Canada, England and South Africa. Most go to hunters drawn to the Llewellin temperament and hunting instinct. In recent years, dogs bred in Noe’s kennel have also enjoyed field-trial success.
Blackeyed Storm is the winningest Llewellin among setter competing in American Kennel Club trials and is out of Noe’s top bitch, Blizzard’s Chessie, and his top sire, Adam’s Spur. Chessie and Spur sired another top trialer in Shoeleather’s Tanner, who last March won the first Midwest Llewellin Shooting Dog Championship near McLeansboro.
The success of those dogs gives Noe hope for the future. Ever the historian, he noted, “no pure Llewellin has placed in the National Bird Dog Championship since 1915.”
That’s somewhat surprising, since Llewellins were dominant in early U.S. field trails. Count Gladstone IV won the country’s first pointing-dog championship in 1896. Other Llewellins followed suit with such success that in 1901 the American Field registered Llewellin setter in its stud book—the first strain within a breed to be recognized.
But from 1915 on, pointers gained in popularity because they trained faster and could better handle pressure.
Even so, Noe believes Llewellins can succeed again on the national level. To make that happen–and to fulfill a promise made to his dog-training mentor, the late Robert J. Johnson of London, Ky.—Noe and his wife Lorri have worked to improve Llewellin trails by creating standards, judging and organizing events.
The main event so far was last spring’s championship—a first for Llewellins.
“What’s next? A (pure Llewellin) that qualifies for the national field trail championship in Grand Junction,, Tenn.,” Noe said. “That’s the dream Mr. Johnson put in me when I got my first dogs.”
That Noe shares the dream is proof of fate, if not destiny. A Naperville native, Noe frequently passed Johnson’s kennel on his way to Milliagan. One day he stopped and—before leaving—spent $40 of $100 he had saved for the semester on a Llewellin named Blue Shale.
In the years since, Noe has changed occupations frequetly, going from preacher to teacher to electrical worker to outdoor writer at the Bureau County Republican and Macomb Journal. Through every career change, Llewellins have remained a constant.
“I probably know (Llewellin) pedigrees better than I know the Bible,” Noe said.
Since marrying Lorri in 1986, Noe has generally maintained a full kennel. At present he has 30 dogs. Five dogs live in the couple’s 12-room farmhouse southwest of Blandinsville.
the Amish-built house is a virtual Llewellin museum. Pictures of setters decorate every wall, and books and magazines on the breed fill bookshelves.
Noe is a perfect curator for that collection, which also includes numerous ceramic setter figurines. He can tell you all about the breeding of these dogs in England, which started with Edward Laverack in the 1800s and was carried on by R. Purcell Llewellin, for whom the strain is named.
Llewellin started shipping setters to the U.S. in the 1870s. Ironically, Noe said those dogs were culls—dogs whose hair Llewellin deemed too short or whose pace he considered too fast. As it turned out, that combination was, for a time, perfectly suited to U.S. hunters and field-trailers.
“The Llewellin, because of its range and out-there mentality, its nose and its high-pointing tail style changed the standard for bird dogs forever,” Noe said.
That the dogs also changed Noe goes without saying.