Irish Setter

The premise of “Big Red,” Walt Disney’s 1962 boy-and-dog picture, is a quiet heresy: a champion Irish Setter — beautiful enough to win everything, owned by a man who fully intends him to — keeps choosing the woods, the boy, and the running instead. Walter Pidgeon plays the owner; the Quebec wilderness plays itself; the dog is never once in doubt. Audiences understood immediately, because Jim Kjelgaard’s 1945 novel had already taught a generation the same lesson: you can shampoo an Irish Setter into a show dog, but what you have is a bird dog with a great haircut.

Exuberance, in mahogany

The breed has held distinguished office. In January 1969, White House staff gave President Nixon an Irish Setter puppy for his birthday: King Timahoe, named for the Irish hamlet of the president’s ancestors. Tim was raised by Manolo Sanchez, Nixon’s valet, who trained him in Spanish — Nixon enjoyed explaining that his Irish dog took commands in a third country’s language — and he grew into the house greeter for visiting heads of state, with one recorded raid on a presidential birthday cake before the singing finished. Even the most controlled building in America could not make this breed solemn.

Living with one is living with weather — fast-moving and mostly sunny. Irish Setters stay puppyish for years, love everyone without discrimination, and need genuine daily running rather than a stroll: under the glamour is a working gundog bred to sweep whole fields at speed. Under-exercised, they hold tryouts for indoor sports. They are soft-hearted and take correction personally, so train with warmth; they are also long on enthusiasm and short on guile, which makes them hopeless guard dogs and wholehearted family ones. The coat drops red feathers year-round. Nobody who chose this dog seems to mind.

Keeping one happy

Grooming

The mahogany coat wants brushing two or three times a week to keep the feathering on legs, ears, and tail free of mats and burrs, plus a bath when fieldwork demands one. Shedding is moderate and steady. Check the long, hanging ears weekly — they hold warmth and moisture, and trouble likes both.

Training

Clever, willing, and easily bruised: harsh corrections buy nothing but a worried dog. Keep sessions short, upbeat, and generously paid, and start recall young — a running breed with a bird habit needs it early. Channel the energy into fieldwork, agility, or fetch with rules; a job settles the fizz.

Exercise

An hour or more of genuine running every day — sprints in fenced space, hiking, swimming — with play besides. A walked-only Irish Setter is an under-served one, and the household furnishings will hear about it. They make superb jogging partners once the joints finish growing, around a year and a half.

Diet

Feed a quality food in two measured, unhurried meals — this is a deep-chested breed with real bloat risk, so keep mealtimes calm and rest them around hard exercise. Through the athletic years, feed the waistline rather than the pleading eyes; a working frame runs best lean.

Red coat, working papers

Irish gentry bred setters to find gamebirds and freeze — “setting” them for the net, and later the gun — in red-and-white coats, until nineteenth-century fashion favored the solid red that made the breed famous. America fell first and hardest: Elcho, imported in 1870, became the first Irish Setter champion in the United States six years later and sired 197 puppies, founding the American line nearly single-handedly.