Picking a new Red Setter and how I did it. Part One!

In this episode I am headed east to Wyoming this past spring to pickup for myself a new pointing dog. I chose to pickup a red setter!  In this podcast I do a before and after of picking out a young dog in its teenage years. I had the option to choose from three. Listen in on how I did it and what tools I was taking with me to help me make a decision. Thanks for listening everyone and good luck training this summer. The hunts are right around the corner. Follow us on instagram @ thebirddogpodcast and DM us there or send us an email to thebirddogpodcast@gmail.com if you have any topics that you would like discussed. Thanks again for following and listening and hope you enjoy this episode!   

Transcript

0:34

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Bird Dog Podcast. Thanks for listening today. Um, have kind of a cool episode. I don't think it's gonna be super long, but just wanted to share with you, what I'm doing. First of all, I just barely had recorded this episode and realized that. It didn't record. So that was pretty awesome. So I'm just gonna be redoing this. Today's Saturday I'm driving out, I'm on the road heading on I 80 East. I'm headed to, Wyoming. I'm gonna meet a guy that owns, A kennel and he breeds, red setters. So Irish setters. Kind of a backstory on why I'm headed out this way and how this all happened is, last, this last December, I. Ended up doing some work on a little red setter that someone had brought me. And I really liked her personality. I liked her size, I liked her, everything about her. And I've been looking at actually picking up a setter. I thought about going with an English or a Lewellen or a red setter. Um, and the English and the wells have been more common, but I haven't found. Years ago I worked with a little red and white setter, and that was a cool little dog and I really liked it. And this little red setter that I just worked with this past December, I liked her. I liked her demeanor, personality, and all that good stuff. And so I ended up reaching out to the client. Found out where they had picked her up and reached out to the breeder and he ended up having, he has a litter that's coming up and then he had, three dogs that are about nine months old. And he has two males and a female. And, um, I'm open to, to any of'em, but, uh, I'm okay. Instead of getting, you know, you go back and forth, should I get a pup? Should I get an older dog? A nine month old for me isn't really, Um, isn't an old dog. Most of our clients' dogs that come in for training, um, are six months of age and up. And so a nine month old is basically what we train all the time. And the benefit of getting one of these dogs at nine months of old is they're still a. Teen, they're just hitting their teenage years. I'll be able to get, jump right into training these dogs or dog and I'll be hunting with it this fall instead of getting a pup this summer, raising it, training it. I wouldn't be hunting it until next fall. And um, I had two Germans, short air pointers over personal dogs as of this last year, but I had a couple clients that wanted'em and so I ended up selling, um, them to new hunting homes. And, uh, I've never personally owned a setter. I've trained a lot of'em. So I, yeah, I'm excited to have my first personal setter. I had a buddy in college. I had two English setters that we hunted, uh, chucker with a lot, and they were great dogs. And, I've trained a handful of Irish setters or red setters. You know, so the, so just to kind of clarify, a Red Setter is an Irish setter to a point, but the Red setters are more, and again, on the, on the lingo on these, I'm not a hundred percent a professional at the lingo, but I guess the Red Setter is more of the, it's an Irish setter, but it's from like the hunting lines and the Irish setters are more a K C kind of show lines, but. They're kind of the same dog pretty much, but the red setter's more like hunting setter. So I'm just gonna call it a red setter'cause that's what the breeder more calls it. So anyhow, so yeah, I don't have a pointing dog personally myself, besides my pointing lab and. I wanted to get a pointing dog again. I've worked with some Irish setters in the past here, and they just were more out of those show lines, more long, flowy coats didn't have, the real good hunting drive that I like to see and want. Um, and I felt like I saw that in this little. This little dog I trained this last year. I didn't get to work with her, um, a long time. She, I just did some collar conditioning on a couple commands for the owner. Um, and, uh, but I liked her personality. I liked her size, I liked how she covered ground. I. And so, yeah, I'm gonna pick one up, see what I think here. So kinda wanted to bring you guys along on this journey as I'm just driving this nice straight road out here. And I thought I'd shoot a quick podcast, before and after picking the dog up. So you can kind of fall along and see, see how I went through this process. So, um, beforehand, before, up until this point, like I talked about my personal podcast, I asked the owner for some videos of the dogs just so I could gauge their personality. I didn't really even need to. I really didn't care if they were like hunting or, I mean, they're, these are puppies, big puppies, and so they don't really know much. But I wanted to more gauge how they held their body, how they held their tail. I wanted to see their personality, obviously their size. Then I got pictures of their parents. I saw pedigrees on the parents asked about health clearances, and again, I gotta work with. Um, a dog outta this kennel. So that, um, that's what led me to this point. Um, so with me, my little, uh, evaluation tools that I have, I have, well, I have my dog box and I have a bunch of training gear in there, but I have a check cord that I'm gonna put these dogs on and I'm gonna pull each dog out and evaluate'em. I brought, a live pigeon that I'm gonna throw for these dogs and see how they react. I brought a dead chucker and I'm gonna take that chucker and, and pop one of its wings off and put it on a string on a fishing pole, the old fishing pole wing on a string. I'm gonna see if I can get those dogs to show interest or to hopefully throw a little flash point even, or a point at the wing. And, at that point I'm gonna be looking for point style. So I'm gonna be evaluating how, how high the dog holds the tail, how intense or focused it is. on the wing. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna be looking for that with the live bird. I'm gonna look for prey drive. I'm hoping the dog's gonna show interest, be relaxed enough that it's gonna go after the bird or show some type of level of interest. So that's why I brought a live bird to work with me. I also brought some bumpers for retrieving and, and also the dead chucker that I'm gonna throw hopefully, and do some retrieving with it. I don't care at this point if the dogs. If the dogs don't like retrieve the bird perfect hand, or if they're a little hard mouth or whatever it is, I would, ideally, I like to throw that bird, the dog runs, grabs, it, kind of runs around with it, packs it around. I can clean up anything. But I am looking for retrieved desire, so I like a pointing dog that retrieves. And then, I'm gonna look just for, get a feel for personality. I want a dog that obviously likes people, so I'm gonna look for one that, you know, is, is fairly open, fairly confident in its own skin. Um, I also am gonna do a vocal test on'em, so I'm gonna pull'em out, put'em in a dog crate, and. Stand outside that dog crate and look to see if they're barking or, staying calm and quiet in a, in a crate. Dogs are kinda like people. If you, some people like to talk a lot and some are a little quieter. I want a dog that's gonna be quiet. I don't. I don't like dogs that are barking nonstop when they're in a dog run or in a crate or at the, in the backyard or wherever they might be. And so I'm gonna try to look for one that's kind of on that, quiet, quieter spectrum. I know you can train a dog to be quiet, but even though they know they should be quiet, a lot of vocal dogs, they still tend to want to try to test the system a little bit. So, um, Yeah, kind of again, overview. I'm gonna look for vocalization. I'm gonna look for point style. I'm gonna look at personality, how well they seem to be socialized or you know, or warm to me. And I'm gonna look for a tree desire, and I'm gonna look for prey desire. So if I have a dog that. It has the point style I want. Score is high there. I'm gonna check and take a look at that dog. If I one that retrieves good, one that shows interest in the wing or shows interest in the live clip, wing Pigeon has a great personality out of these three dogs. That's what I'm looking for. I don't care if it's a male or a female.'cause at this point I'm not really looking to get into breeding now if I get one and one of these dogs ends up being a really nice dog, then there's. I would consider picking up another one down the road and, and having a litter every once in a while, um, if I find a good red setter. Um, so that's kind of the valuation. Um, just wanted to bring you guys along, kind of tell you what I'm up to today and, uh, I think it'll be fun. And then after I meet with this gentleman, And, evaluate these dogs and hopefully pick one. If they look good. When I'm driving home, I'll get back on the podcast here and I'll share you kind of a, a before and after and, what I ended up going with and how the whole process went. So thanks for tagging along. Hope everyone's having a great day, and we will talk to you. Soon.