Fantastic setter

My husband and I have a rescued Irish Setter male and had been scouring the rescue sites looking for another. Unfortunately there were none nearby and no one will allow an adoption out of state. So we began to look for a breeder. Anamacara was close to where we live but would not sell us a puppy because we didn't have a fenced in yard (?!). So we looked further and found Smyth Irish Setters. Iron Mountain was a long way to drive and we found a lot of negative reviews on line but we contacted the breeder anyway. Doing further research it seemed that one disgruntled breeder made Smyth Irish Setters his project to smear and discredit her. We found Ms. Rose Smyth to be a very down-to-earth and ethical breeder. We were a bit nervous meeting her in a gas station parking lot to pick up our puppy but after the smear campaign I mentioned I don't blame her for being cautious.

We met her in early February 2015 to purchase an eight week old female puppy she had picked out for us after a few email discussions and one phone conversation regarding what we were looking for. We couldn't be more pleased! We named our little girl Teagan and she had been a joyful little creature since the moment we got her. She tolerated the five hour car ride home very well and spent it snuggled in my lap. She was very easy to house train and learned how to use a potty bell by the back door immediately. She is incredibly intelligent and far exceeds our abilities to train her. We have taught her many simple commands which she learned quickly and has shown great capacity to learn more if we knew what else to teach her! For the first eight months of her life she would occasionally come to work with me. I work on a 911 ambulance service and she quickly learned that when the pager sounded it meant she was to go to her kennel. My boss was astounded to witness this as he has had dogs all of his life and had never seen such consistent compliance.

Teagan is friendly and outgoing and loves to meet other people and dogs. She is quite the snuggle bug, is very affectionate and greets us enthusiastically when we've been gone with wiggles and squeals. She has only destroyed a couple pens, a pencil and some paper that we had left within her reach when she was younger but has never chewed on any furniture, shoes or anything other than her toys. Kennel training was a little challenging as it was hard to hear her cry, but within three days had settled down and realized her kennel wasn't so awful after all. After six months we began to leave her out of her kennel for short periods of time while we were out of the house. By the time she was ten months old she had free roam of the house for periods of time up to nine hours without causing any problems or having any accidents. She is now almost 14 months old and we couldn't be more pleased.

We look forward to buying another Smyth Irish Setter in another couple of years and hope that she is still breeding then!