Cover Picture (frame able) Finn Laura Hirvinen and her young IRWS Ballycraig Annah make history by winning the Finnish Derby in its centenary year. Picture taken by Sandy Peter'ka in Lapua Finland September 2001."
Index for December 2001 issue
Derby Princess: by Jim Sheridan Delgany Ireland
Jim gives a day-by-day report on his trip to Finland and the history made there by two beautiful girls at the Centenary Finnish trials
Eye-Popping Discovery: by Sandy Peter’ka Western Australia
The first club to publish the world’s first Irish Red & White standard … lived in America!
Which Came First: by Anne Bailey Thatcham, England
Was it all red or red & white?
Separation Anxiety: Medically what should you know? by Crystal Lewis, Kentucky, USA
Crystal is a Veterinary Technician and owner/competitor of IRW’s
Males Looking For Love
American IRW History: by anyone who has a bit of history to add.
This will be a section we hope to fill with exciting information each issue. Our earliest date in America is the 1840’s, so far.
Puppies
Letter to America: by Jim Sheridan
Events, Activities and Goings On
page 2
Which came first the full coloured red setter or the red and white setter? This question has long been discussed by numerous people over a number of years and yet people still do not agree. It is my belief that the Irish red and white setter was the first and I base this on extensive research that I have done on the origins of the breed.
I owned my first red and white in the mid 1980’s and started to complete one of the 10 generation circular pedigrees that can be found at any dog show but I soon hit problems in filling in the earlier generations. I now set off in my quest to learn more about the history of this marvelous breed and its origins.
Until the production of the first Kennel Club Stud book which covered the period from 1859 to 1874 there was no formal register of pedigree dogs, in fact few people kept formal records of their dogs breeding, although by reference to publications written in the late 1800s and early 1900s I have been able to trace my dogs ancestry back to 1790, as you can see on the extended pedigree of Gadhar Aphrodite, and have found documentary evidence which proves that these early dogs were in fact red and white setters.
Lieutenant-Colonel
Corn. Schilbred wrote in 1927 about these dogs ..’ When Edward Laverack
visited Ireland in search of some new blood for his setter strain, he visited
Harristown and LaTouche’s kennel where the keeper showed him one blood red and
white setter that was the best there…’. Laverack went to Ireland on a number
of occasions visiting various kennels in a bid to improve his strain and we are
told that he visited Miss Lidwell of Beggars Bush which is just outside of
Dublin and he was greatly impressed by the dogs he saw there. These dogs were
blood red and white. Amongst her dogs was a bitch called Stella and two young
males, Young York and Old York. These I take to be York I and York II on the
extended pedigree. Stella is identified as being a dog with red and white
markings. Mr Laverack asked if he could use one of stud dogs and was told that
this was completely out of the question.
In his book ‘The Setter’ Mr Laverack wrote ‘ There is another colour of Irish setters, blood red and white, quite as pure, indeed some people maintain, of greater antiquity and purity of blood, than the blood red….’ He also goes on to say ‘I think the handsomest red and white Irish setters I ever saw were in the possession of the two Misses Ledwidge, (note the different spelling of the name), of Beggars Bush near Dublin: Stella the dam and the two sons , named Old York and Young York.’ Miss Ledwidge told Mr Laverack that she had owned this breed of setter for fifty years or more.
Colonel J K Millner in his book ‘The Irish Setter – Its History and its Training’ also makes reference to ‘..the splendid red and white setters…’ which were owned by the Misses Lydwell (yet another variation of spelling) of Beggars Bush. To my mind all these references refer to the same people and dogs. He goes on to say that ‘.. This strain came from the O’Connor setters and were much the same as the La Touche breed.’ In a letter from Colonel Gresson from Newberry, Harristown he describes how he has tried to discover the origin of the Irish setter, he writes, ‘ I have often tried to find out which, the red and whites or the reds, were the older breed, and as far as I can find out from the oldest breeders, viz., the late John King of Ballylin, the late Edward Evans of Gortmerron and the late Mr Tom Hendrick of Kerdiffstown, the two breeds were distinct in their time, but they all agree that in their early days the reds were inclined to throw pups with white on face, chest and feet, and that some breeders were greater offenders in this way than others.’
He continues to say, ‘From the above we can deduce either that the breeds were distinct and were sometimes crossed, or that the original breed was red and white in no fixed proportion of colour…… The latter deduction I am inclined to favour, especially as we know the setter evolved from the spaniel and that white predominated in the early spaniels.’
Lord Rossemore of County Monaghan had a strain of red and white setters which can be traced back to the 1800’s. These setters were also known as Arran Setters as the Rossmore family had shooting grounds on the Isle of Aran in Scotland. Red and white setters were very common in Ireland and in fact had their own classes at local shows. In 1904 there were classes for them in a dog show at Strabane.
In his book Sporting Dogs, A Croxton Smith says 'We know that the early show dogs in the 1870’s were more often white and red than whole coloured, which came afterwards……..’ You can see from the engraving red and white setters were actually shown in 1884 at Madison Square Garden in the USA.
Dogs
were also shown some years later at a dog show in France. Many of them were
owned by Sir Robert de Montbron and were described as Epagneul Ecossais - Scotch
Setter. This classification caused a lot of debate in the dog world and the
breed were not recognised as this in England. Mr S Smale , who was a renowned
judge of setters at this time, said that these setters were of the type and
colour of the red and white Irish setter. Research into the background of these
dogs found that Sir Robert rented land in Rosshire for grouse shooting and that
he had a kennel of setters there and these were thought to be the foundation
stock for the Espageul Ecossais. In fact an article written by Dr T A Baldwin,
an Irish Setter expert, in ‘The Kennel Encyclopedia ‘, in the early 1900’s
said, ‘… in the ‘New Book of the dog’ he finds described and illustrated
a white and red French Spaniel so like the white and red Irish Setter of 50
years ago as to be practically identical.’ This would have been a period
around the 1860’s.
The more I research the breed and with the mounting evidence that I am accumulating I am convinced that as a breed the Red and White Setter is the original Irish Setter.
