Blaze,
was our first pure Humphrey's Dashing Bondhu bred Llewellin Setter we ever
owned. She was the most natural bird dog we had ever seen in over 35 years
of owning, breeding, and even professionally training a vast number of
different pointing breeds and strains of bird dogs.
Blaze
was an orange belton but appeared almost completely white with just a few
orange spots. She started very young and was naturally steady on point
and retrieving reliably at only 4 months old. She was totally NATURAL
without any force training necessary and was so outstanding that
she pointed and retrieved over 200 native Kentucky Bob-white Quail and
several Woodcock her first season on her own.
Blaze
was so superior over our great line of German Shorthair Pointers we had
bred for eight generations that we completely ended their long breeding
program the following year. Even though we had a long waiting list for
their pups, we could no long say they were the best bird dogs. Blaze became
our main bird dog and aided in training our other Llewellin Setters even
some older than she was.
Believe
it or not, no one who hunted with her can remember Blaze ever breaking
a point, losing a downed bird, missing a retrieve, dropping a bird on retrieve
or not naturally backing other dogs on point. She continued year after
year to amaze everyone who hunted with her with her extremely strong scenting
ability, all day stamina, and beautiful high style, always pointing confidently
with an 11-12 o'clock tail and head held high.
She
was so beautiful to watch coursing and methodically working a field, always
keeping us in her line of sight, swinging wide in open ground and hunting
close as any dog in thick cover, making her an expert at locating quail
coveys and then equally well at working single birds one at a time, no
matter how thick the cover became. I regret that she was never used for
Ruffed Grouse, but take it from a 30 plus year Grouse hunter, she would
have been awesome on them and did do awesome on hunting fall woodcock in
our area.
She
was extremely intelligent, naturally knowing how to back off of running
birds and to swing around them to get a head of them to cut them off and
pin them down between herself and the hunter.
Blaze
was also the first bird dog of any breed to achieve "Gun Dog Certification"
and did it on native wild birds to lead the way in IPDBA for bird dogs.
Unfortunately,
we waited too long to try and get pure Dashing Bondhu pups out of her,
but she did prove herself as an exceptional reproducer even when out-crossed
twice on a very good King's Bomber III bred male that we had owned and
hunted with her at the time. Even though all 21 of her pups from two litters
completely satisfied their owners, none were kept by us for future breeding
because of them not being of the pure Dashing Bondhu strain.
Fortunately,
Blaze did have many outstanding litter mates like Dashing Chess Bondhu
and Dashing Humphrey Bondhu and her Sire Dashing Ringold Bondhu had produced
hundreds of outstanding dogs making it possible for us to preserve and
reproduce the same quality pure Dashing Bondhu bloodlines through
several of their offspring. It is our opinion that, Mr. Llewellin's and
Mr. Humphrey's 100 years of combined breeding of their personal Dashing
Bondhu's are by far the most natural foot hunting gentlemen's bird dogs
ever developed and perfected and is the reason we specialize only in breeding
the purest of these bloodlines today.
Blaze
passed on to the happy hunting grounds in spring 2007, but will always
have a special place in our hearts and with those who knew her at our home
or in the field. She blessed us and all the many friends and family that
hunted over her for 11 awesome years on native wild Kentucky and Georgia
Bob-White Quail. Yes, we made trips to Georgia to hunt native Georgia quail
with friends there and she always did a phenominal job at locating, pointing,
and retreiving them day after day, month after month and year after year.
Blaze
is deeply missed, but we are so pleased to be able to see her continue
to live on through her same quality pure Dashing Bondhu bloodlines we have
here at Mountain View Kennel today. Just one look at our dogs pedigrees
will show how much of her breeding is maintained in our dogs and you can
see in her pedigree below, she is closely related to all the dogs we own
today and is of the purest Humphrey Dashing Bondhu bloodlines left in the
world.
It
should be noted that Blaze was out of one of the most awesome Llewellin
Setter litters we have ever seen in over 35 years of breeding gun dogs.
All her litter mates were OUTSTANDING NATURALS, here are named just a few
of her famous litter mates Field Winner Dashing Houdne Bondhu, Dashing
Humphrey Bondhu, Dashing Chess Bondhu and Dashing Chessy Bondhu ( in Russia).
Her pedigree of all Dashing Bondhu's is a list of who's who of direct decedents
from Llewellin's and Humphrey's personal kennels.
As
you will see we have done an amazing job in preserving Blaze's bloodlines
through Irish Chess Bondhu and Hank's Ringo Bondhu a daughter and son of
Dashing Chess Bondhu (Blaze's littermate) are in our dogs many times.
