Welcome to gordonsetter.org 

I have been fast friends with 3 Gordons.

Amanda, a very typical springset bitch, 24" at the shoulder. She was the birdyest of my Gordons, If ignored at all she would hunt by herself, often returning with a bird of some sort, almost always still alive and unharmed except for shock. She was very much a can go all day type of dog. Never seemed to tire even when I weighed her down with fenceposts to try and slow her down. She was a good looking bitch, with nice feathering, and fairly good size ears. Her coat rarely needed clipping, but did have a tendency to be fine enough to mat easily. I always think of her out in the tall grass sweeping back and forth followed by a 6x6 fencpost turning end for end to keep up. Amanda died of a pancreatic tumor in her 14th year.

My second Gordon was Buddy. He was a not real birdy Gordon. He was 28 inches at the shoulder. Broad of chest and ears the size of dinner plates. We used to call him bat-dog, lift his ears out to the side, it always got a laugh. His ears did not look so big when they were hanging normally. We never were able to keep food out of his ears, we tried confining them when he ate, but nothing seemed capable of supporting them. Narrow bowls helped. We used to wash them after he ate, that worked. He got good at dipping his ears in a bucket. He tended to be lean. He had a prolific coat that required regular clipping and matted easily as about 1/3 of the coat was. what I now recognize as thinner wooly hair. He was not without some small faults. Slight kink in the end of his tail and his front teeth were not perfectly straight, but his bite was good. His tan markings were not terribly pronounced as they were of a dark shade and of smaller area than on many Gordons. But he was a drop dead gourgeous dog. Even when not in top grooming form, people would most often let out a "My god that dog is beautiful" unable to control them selves as far as I could tell. Buddy had the setter prance and displayed it all the time. He was also a go all day dog, very fast on his feet. He had a tendency to bounce off walls, fences, trees, and people to change direction if he was going to fast rather than slow down. He was also a jumper. He could jump in almost any direction from a dead stop, easily clearing a couch or kitchen table. Buddy succomed to a freak aspiration pnuemonia in his 15th year. He was otherwise in good health and might have lived another 6 or more years given his good condition.

Sunny is my current Gordon. Sunny is a real cuddler. He stays relatively closer than my past dogs but and like all Gordons is constantly on the move when we are out. Sunny is very much the same size as Buddy was, but his chest seems not as broad, but it seems equal in lung capacity to Buddy's. His ears are smaller, but are correct for length . Sunny also seems to tire quicker, but never stops. I think it is mostly due to heat, with his smaller ears, he cannot radiate the heat as fast. Sunny has a much cleaner coat than my previous Gordons. He has almost none of the fine "wooly" hair that mats fairly easily. For the the most part I can groom him with just a metal comb. The varius burrs that always kept me busy brushing Amanda and Buddy (some times requiring a short clip) seem to comb easily from his coat. His coat does not mat easily even when I let it grow a bit long. He does require clipping almost every month, as his hair grows quite quickly.