It’s just over a year since this beautiful boy left us – I still miss his gentle presence, although having struggled bravely with degenerative myelopathy for the last couple of years of his life, he was tired and it was definitely time to let him go. Seeing photos of him made me think about all the dogs I’ve been privileged to share my life with over many years, what I wish I could have done differently and what each one has taught me.
Finn was a typical impulse purchase – you know when you “go to see a litter of puppies”? And of course, you come back with one. Even if it’s a terrible decision. He was half the size of my older Irish Setter, Riley, at the same age, and the breeders had the sire tied up in the garden. He vomited all the way home and consequently developed a pathological hatred of cars that, despite my best efforts at counter-conditioning, lasted his entire life. At four months, I noticed he didn’t appear to be growing, and the vet diagnosed giardia – a highly-resistant parasite that took a lot of time and chemicals to cure and left him never quite catching up on the growth he’d missed – as an adult he was smaller and finer than Riley, which may well have been genetic to some degree but was almost certainly due in part to the hiatus in development. I got very used to people assuming that I had a dog and a bitch.
Of course, I didn’t know most of this when I paid for him and carried him out of the house – but there were definitely warning signs that I should have picked up on. The problem was that, having for many years enjoyed a multi-dog household, I had spent several with a solo setter-cross, Whisper. Having got round to remedying the situation at last by bringing baby Riley home to join the family, Whisper died very suddenly six months later, leaving me back where I started. Eight months after this, I followed up on an advert for Irish Setter puppies and Finn arrived.
Despite everything, Finn was a very easy dog to own. He got on with pretty much everyone, human and canine, never really bothered the cats, wasn’t particularly inclined to pull on the lead and loved nothing more than a run in the field followed by a cuddle with the famous setter “lean” (if you know, you know). He wasn’t perfect, who is, but he didn’t cause any major problems – although, of course, he was happy to join in with any mischief instigated by his big brother. We did some training classes when he was young, but around that time I became increasingly disenchanted with the style of ‘balanced’ training used in the courses we attended, so we just sort-of stopped. And didn’t do anything else. We went for lovely walks (although we were very restricted for routes due to Riley’s reactivity – more on that later) and I taught him one or two things at home, but that was it.
By the time I was studying and qualifying as a dog trainer, Finn was too unsteady to take part in anything very demanding, and I think he enjoyed his retirement while I trained the spaniels – he never had the same enthusiasm as they do; but maybe if I’d found the things that sparked his interest, he would have. I’ll never know. I’m not beating myself up too much, he had a good life and was very loved, but, if nothing else, he’s taught me not to take a simple, quietly confident, well-behaved dog for granted!
Homefield K9 Training 