- Home Page
- Membership
- About ESAA
- About the Breed
- Judges Education
- Breeder Listing
- Futurity/Maturity
- Rescue
- Health & Genetics
- Events
- Members Only
- Library & Gallery
- ESAA STORE
- Junior Handlers
2021 ESAA National Information![]() |
![]() Join Us on Facebook |
“Everybody Must Get Stoned”
To paraphrase Bob Dylan, every English Setter show dog might benefit from
getting stoned -- grooming stoned, that is.
Grooming trends change over time. These days, when I look in the English
Setter ring, I see lots of body coats that have been shortened with
thinning shears, and some of them are very short indeed. When I was taught
to groom 25 years ago, the person who taught me was a purist who advocated
stripping out the undercoat and then finishing with a grooming stone and
using thinning shears sparingly and only to blend around the edges. People
who have gotten into the breed in the last few years may have been taught
to scissor and may not know there is another way.
Hand stripping and stoning takes much more time than scissoring, but it’s
the best way to produce that smooth, finished look.
English Setters have a modest double coat with a fuzzy undercoat for
warmth and a silky topcoat for waterproofing. The undercoat often has lots
of colored hair, whereas the topcoat is mostly white. Scissoring removes
the white topcoat hairs, making the dog look darker, which is a
disadvantage (because the English Setter standard asks for even ticking
all over) and removes the dog’s protection from rain and snow. Stripping
and stoning preserve the topcoat.
I like Classic strippers, the ones with wooden handles, but many other
strippers work well. You do not pluck at the hair like you do on a
terrier, but comb through the back coat with the stripper at an angle,
pulling out undercoat. You then use the grooming stone to take off the
wispy hairs that stick up, to blend around the edges, and to remove the
fuzzy hair on the front and sides of the legs. Many vendors sell grooming
stones, which are just pumice stones cut into small pieces.
When you remove undercoat, the silky long hairs of the topcoat lie flat,
and the look is elegant and natural. Scissoring, to my eye, makes the dog
look scalped. The late great Ann Rogers Clark appreciated a stripped and
stoned ES coat, and when judging, she would lift the dog’s hair with her
thumb to see if the topcoat had been preserved and how much undercoat had
been removed.
Irish and Gordon Setters have a silkier coat than English Setters, and
they look just fine if scissored, but the texture of an English Setter
back coat is a little harsher, wavier, and sometimes curlier than their
Celtic and Gaelic cousins. Over time, scissoring increases the curl in an
English Setter back coat, and if you scissor, you often have to keep
making the dog’s coat shorter and shorter to control the curl, whereas
stripping and stoning encourages the coat to lie flat. If you do a little
stripping every time you bathe and brush the dog, it’s not a big job to
keep the coat in beautiful show shape.
If you’ve never hand stripped and stoned your English Setter show dog,
perhaps you would enjoy asking someone who knows how to show you what to
do. You just might fall in love with the results.