About the old type of setters

The black setter with tan markings, or, as it used to be called, Gordon, is powerful, dressed in black with a blue tint and bright red tan markings, shiny, slightly wavy long fur, with his beautiful head with a noticeable fracture, long ears and expressive large dark brown eyes, looks handsome.


Although it is inferior in speed and partly in flair to the pointer and speckled and red setters, it has its advantage in other ways, especially when hunting in the forest, where a dog with a balanced temperament is required. Due to its long coat, which in some cases protects it from snake bites and wounds on deadwood and stumps, it works, unlike the pointer, without fear of the cold, until late autumn. The moderate width of the search in most cases by shuttle, at a somewhat heavy gallop, allows, especially for older hunters, to give preference to a dog of this breed, since it is easier to control it on the hunt than a temperamental pointer or setter of other breeds.


Calm in character, very intelligent and hardy at work, the black setter with tan markings is most suitable for the natural hunting conditions in many areas of the Soviet Union.

Black setters (gordons) with tan markings first appeared in Russia around the 60s of the last century.


If in pre-revolutionary times, kennel owners, due to the lack of new and valuable producers, were forced to breed dogs in close kinship, which led to the degeneration of the breed, then, unfortunately, our modern "gordonists", having good producers and not using them, followed the same path.


A vivid illustration of this trend in breeding work with the black and tan setter breed in Moscow over the past 2-3 decades can be found in the pedigree of Dick Trokhimovsky, descended from a Pirate (son of champion Karo I, 6879) and Stella Davydova (daughter of champion Karo I, 6879 and his littermate Nelly, 6880). The following example is Diana of Arkhangelsk, in whose pedigree the champion Karo I, 6879, meets three times in the first 3 rows of ancestors, and once his littermate Nelly, 6880, as well as the champion Nana II G. A. Uspenskaya, who has the champion Karo I, 6879, 6 times in the first four tribes of the pedigree. The pedigrees of many Moscow black setters with tan markings are based on the same principle.


The results of such breed management have not been slow to affect: in recent years, inbreeding litters have become champions. Karo I or his father, an exportation Stylist, and later the champion Karo III, 96, V. Petrov, very often began to come across puppies of a non-standard brown color, puppies of the "Irish" type. True, cases of such puppies have never been uncommon in the breed of black setters with tan markings, as evidenced by S. V. Pensky in the collection "Police dogs and hunting weapons" for 1901, but still it was more or less an accident, and now it has become commonplace. https://1winind.in/1win-app/