Ted - each dog has it's own personality and training requirements. A setter isn't always a high-tailed pointing dog and if that's what you want from him, he will need your encouragement and your praise when he pleases you - he will always try to please you.
Grace still needs reminders to hold her tail up especially early on in each successive bird season and on our walks and runs when she freezes on a "stink sparrow" or mourning dove or robin. At those times I 'steady' her and walk up beside her, hold her tail in the position I want it in and rap the underside of it as I say "Tail up! - Tail up!" She will hold her tail up after that.
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"I'm a Setter man.
Not because I think they're better than the other breeds,
but because I'm a romantic - stuck on tradition - and to me, a Setter just "belongs" in the grouse picture."
George King, "That's Ruff", 2010 - a timeless classic.
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