Quel avenir pour le setter irlandais en France ?

[Monique VIRY]

Nouvelles directives de jugement données par le Red Club en France.
Lors de l'assemblée générale du Red Club, le 28 juillet 2007, le comité nous a indiqué les nouvelles directives de jugement :
Taille idéale pour obtenir le CACS : 56 à 60 cm pour les femelles et 59 à 64 cm pour les mâles.
Ces tailles ont été fixées car, d'après le comité, les grands chiens ne savent pas chasser.
Pour obtenir le CAC en exposition il faut avoir 7 caractères jugés excellents ( tête, avant main, corps, arrière main, ensemble, robe et démarche ) et un chien dans la taille idéale.
Ceci nous a été indiqué le samedi avec application à partir du lendemain lors de la Nationale d'Elevage.
Que pouvons nous faire, quel est l'avenir du setter irlandais en France ?
Je remercie Susan qui s'est proposée pour la traduction.

[ursula wilby]

OK let me try to keep this very brief....

Henk: I feel (yes...no facts, just feelings :-) we are still not talking about the same thing. You are talking about dogs working and being companiens at the same time.
I am talking about selling FT-bred dogs to pet homes.

Katariina: I realise that the enviroment has a lot to do with how the dog turns out. And I am also aware of that a well trained dog will be able to be controlled in any situation. Like you say about your dog Woitto. So I agree there as well! Perhaps I have only come across the type of working setters that are bred for maximum speed and that need a professional to handle them? Also reading your text, you are talking a lot about setters hunting in woods. The ones I am refering to have been ones trained on open fields and "fjäll". But I have also spoken to the breeders of these setters and discussed that this type of setter is not suitable as a pet (and nothing but a pet).

This I feel (once again...feeling...no facts according to Henk) is rather like the competition-bred BC. You have gone from fast to turbo-charged and beyond...

Vanessa:: Quite correct, this is way of the subject. I will shut up right now!
Promise...:-)

[Susan Stone]

Hello Vanessa,

thanks for bringing us back to the point - but I admit I for one enjoy the battles of Henk vs Ursula;-)))

Sorry, I have not looked up the articles you mention in the FCI constitution - but I firmly believe that if the french kennel club is a member of the FCI then surely they also agree to follow the FCI standards of the breed. Adjusting the standard to suit the requirements of some people in the committee of the Red Club would therefore not be possible. Even at CAC shows the FCI standard is adhered to - or am I wrong?

I do believe that if the judge at an international show in France were to apply these new directives the exhibitors would have every right to desposit an official complaint with the show organisation and with the french kennel club. Maybe this would be one way forward? I would assume no judge would be willing to loose his/her judging permit by going against the rules/standard of the FCI.

[Henk ten Klooster]

Hey Vanessa you sound like my teacher in first class high school.

I am not a legal mind, but I do know that France is one of the most prominent -and founding- members of the FCI. And certainly in the recent past, members of the Red Club France were in top ranks of the FCI. Plus that recently members of the Red Club France were training and trialling in Ireland where also all entries were mesaured (and found ok!).

Plus that in one of the more recent (beautiful!) clubmags of the Red Club France there was an interview with Ray O'Dwyer entitled In the paradise of red setters (=Ireland). He is the chairman of the Irish Red Setter Club and as a student of John Nash (Moanruad) one of the most important "brains" behind both the new standard for conformation and the Official description of the working style.

It may be off topic Vanessa, but why don't you adapt to the country where you live? The English are nowadays not anymore ruling Ireland. So you might find out you can't do that in France:-))) And France has so many opportunities to train and trial Irish setters, that makes many setterfans jealous. Adapting might bring new horizons, like training and trialling in Ireland - a big friend of France!

[Carmel Murphy]

But if Ireland and France are such good friends why is France going against the breed standard (for height)from Ireland?

[Henk ten Klooster]

Maybe they think my good friends never won a war, so lets go ahead of them:-))))

[ursula wilby]

Ahhh...this is getting more interesting all the time!
Lets get WW2 in to this discussion as well shall we? :-)
(Sorry going off subject again...)

Ursula
(German by birth)

[Susan Stone]

Ursula - we will need Laura to help here;-))))

[Laura Kolbach]

laura, the melting pot ;-)

[Susan Stone]

Good question Carmel! We'd all like to hear the answer to that one!!!

I recently spoke to a knowledgable person involved in working Irish in Britain on the subject of the size of working dogs. I was informed that John Nash sent his tiny Irish to France, keeping the others for himself. Some descendants went to Britain and were of 'normal' size and stronger build. The ones I saw in England (not many I admit) were longer in leg than their show counterparts, did not have the depth of chest nor anything like the feathering - but they did have size and also expressive heads.
They were not so far removed as some of the french working setter are from the Irish we know ... The photographs shown by Katariina also show strong well boned Irish working on the Fjäll.

Carmel - what is the size of working dogs in Ireland?

[Monique VIRY]

Males : 63,5 cm à 68,5 cm
Femelles : 56 cm à 61 cm

Conversions : il faut multiplier par 2,54

[ursula wilby]

I have never been good at converting cm to inches Carmel, but 60 cm as a maximum for bitches sounds pretty small to me!
I dont think i have never bred a bitch as small as that.
Mine tend to be around 62-63 cm.
And they are certainly not big compared to a lot.
But about the same size as the FT-males.
(And have been mistaken for GOODLOOKING males by some hunters. Well, goodlooking until they find out what lines they have...suddenly they are no longer all that good-looking....:-)

GREAT, now we have a conversion!
I thought that the start of this thread said 60 cm as a maximum for bitches. Not that one cm is so much...we had a messuring-craze here a couple of years ago and one of my bitches messured 72 cm! (All the big ones were thrown out!) I happened to hear the judge so made him messure again. So by that time she had shrunk to 63 cm.
She then became BOB.
So there will be that as well...the judges not being able to handle the messuring-stick.

[Carmel Murphy]

I accidently deleted my previous reply when trying to edit it to include the cm conversion but it would not save my edited reply so I had to delete instead!!! This site is acting a bit strange lately!! Anyway the average height for show dogs here is between 25"(63cm) and 27"(69cm) and bitches are around 22"(56cm) and 25"(63cm) the new height standard will be close to those heights!