Locksheath Gordon Setters [Part 1]

Could you introduce yourself to the readers please?

My name is Keith Whiting and my passion, which is almost a full-time job, is the dog breed Gordon Setters.

How long has this been a passion for you?

My wife, Cari, and I have been involved with Setters for around thirty years now. It started off with English Setters, still part of the Setter family, but completely different. We always had a pair, but initially we weren’t involved in the show or trial scene. We did try, but felt a little bit left out of things. It’s a very close-knit community and, as newcomers, we found it was quite difficult to be accepted. At the time, we had a young son and our priorities were different anyway, so we waited until we were more experienced with the dogs to try again.

English Setters were your gateway drug then?

[Laughs] Over the years we’ve had six English Setters, as I say, always as pairs. We lost one of the last pair and the surviving dog went into decline having lost her mate. She was very depressed, didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to eat.

I’d seen Gordon Setters when I was younger and I was really taken with them. It had always been in the back of my mind that one day I would have one. As luck would have it, Cari was looking through the Free-Ads pages, this was back in the days before the wonderful world of the Internet, and there were Gordon Setter puppies for sale. But what was the most interesting thing to us, was that they were local, only ten minutes away. We didn’t know that there was a breeder so close by.

The local breeder being Frances Bastable?

Yes, and Fran was to become a good friend and mentor to us.

When was this?

Back in 2014 we got our very first Gordon Setter Skye. Then, not quite two years later, Frances phoned us up and said ‘I’ve got another litter, would you be interested’? We ummed and ahhhhed for a bit, then said, sure, why not. During this time I’d had several conversations with Fran and expressed an interest in doing more with the dogs, perhaps the show scene initially. She said that if we wanted, we could have the pick of the new litter with a view to eventually showing the dog.

… So we went down to have a look.

And you fell in love …

Yeah, you can’t really walk away from puppies [laughs]. So we had our next puppy, ‘Summer’.

So now you had the right dog, you could step into the Showing World properly?

Yes, I started doing the Ringcraft training through a local club at six months old, to get her ready for her first show.

What was the show?

The Manchester Championship Dog Show.

Your first show?

Yes, my first show as an exhibitor. We had a caravan at the time, and I remember taking it up to the Staffordshire showground. We pitched it on the site so we were all set for a nice early start the next day. Anyway, we came in second place as Minor Puppy, which was fantastic.

Not a bad start [laughs]. This was 2016?

2017, we qualified her for Crufts at this show, so that was quite exciting and then we continued to show her.
In the meantime, Summer was about 15 months old at this time, we thought it would be quite good to have our own litter.

And this is where the extensive experience that Frances has came into its own?

Definitely. She was there in the background giving advice. Helping us to select the right dog, looking at pedigrees, making sure we had all the right paperwork, health testing and generally guiding us for each step. We eventually found a suitable dog, but then we had to travel over to Germany for the mating!

Ahhh. So not quite what you expected then?

No. We knew the dog lived in Germany, but we hadn’t thought that far ahead. As Summer came into season, Fran, her husband and myself steamed over to Kamp-Lintfort.
It turned out that the dog was staying with the owner’s friend, because the owner was in America [laughs]. It was a mad time. A dash out and back again all in the same day.

How common is it to have to travel that far for a mating?

It’s not particularly common. It just so happened that the dog we selected happened to be a European dog. It happens quite a lot, but it’s not an everyday thing that UK breeders go to Europe. Just luck of the draw really.

So, you’ve now bred Summer for the first time …

We had our first litter and Summer was a fantastic mum, perfect in every way, we were really pleased with how it had all turned out. Around this time things had been progressing between us and Fran. She was getting older and wanted to take more of a back seat with the breeding and she asked us if we would like to share her ‘Affix’.

What’s an Affix?

It’s the kennel name. All of our dogs are ‘Locksheath’, then whatever the given name is. Fran registered the Locksheath name in 1999. In 2017 we became a shared interest holder, and finally, in 2020, the Affix was passed wholly to us.

How would you describe your role at Locksheath Gordon Setters?

I’m the ’show master’ [laughs]. I think that’s probably the easiest way to describe what I do. Cari and I both look after the dogs, but I’m the one who ‘shows’ them. I do the grooming, the training and then the showing. There are quite a few shows that I do on my own, but if we’ve entered a lot of dogs, then Cari will come as well. Obviously we can’t leave the other dogs on their own at home, so we’ll farm them out to my father-in-law or our son, David. He’ll take one, but any more is too much of a handful for him [laughs].

Thanks very much for your time Keith, and Cari, what’s the best way for anyone interested in what you do to make contact?