Breed Priorities – Gordon Setter

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260 – March, 2024

By Nikki Riggsbee

The Gordon Setter is the most substantial of the four setter breeds recognized by AKC. Originally called the Black and Tan Setter in the United Kingdom, the breed was developed by Alexander Gordon, the fourth Duke of Gordon, at his estate in Scotland. Many of the breed’s features enable him to work on the rough terrain of the area.

Setters, including the Gordon, were especially used prior to the appearance of reliable guns. The setters would find the birds and then sit or lie down near them, and the hunters would throw a net over both dog and birds.

The Gordon Setter arrived in the United States prior to the establishment of the American Kennel Club and was one of the initial breeds recognized by AKC in 1878. With the most recent registration statistics (2022), Gordon Setters ranked 99th of AKC’s 200 recognized dog breeds.

We invited forty-nine Gordon Setter breed experts (breeder-judges and mentors) to complete a survey on their breed’s priorities in conformation. Twenty-nine agreed to do so. Twenty-one completed surveys were received by the deadline. The group averaged over forty-eight years in the breed, more than found in most surveys, especially those of larger breeds. Those who are approved to judge have been doing so for nearly twenty-nine years on average. Many of the approved judges have judged their national and other Gordon specialties. Many of the others have judged sweepstakes at the national and other breed specialties.

Gordon Setter Virtues

The survey included a list of characteristics taken from the AKC Gordon Setter standard for the experts to prioritize. The list below is in sequence by the average of the experts’ ranks, with 1 being the most important.

Click here to read the complete article
260 – March, 2024

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