Our Trip to Meet the Gordon Setters

On Friday morning we hit the road for a small town just outside of Hannover, Germany. Our destination, Forester's of Darkmoor, the Gordon Setter breeder's home. Brian found this breeder online after much research and consideration. A few months ago he started emailing with the breeder to get a sense of their breeding philosophies and their dogs. Right from the start we felt good about this breeder. We learned that Lara...

...was bred (her first litter!) and due to have puppies in mid-May. We decided this was a great opportunity to get a puppy before we move back to the states and jumped at the chance to go visit the dogs on our way to Amsterdam.

When we arrived at the breeder's we knew we were in for a treat. We were greeted by the owner, Dagmar along with Katy (Lara's half sister) and her 8 week old pups:



Side note: I had never heard puppies nurse before...wow! It's really loud! Poor Katy...

Katy's litter is absolutely adorable! We couldn't play with them enough:



Lara is gorgeous too. She has a soft, silky coat, strong build, and very sturdy hips. Hip dysplasia can be a problem with Gordon's, but we were extremely happy to see a nice set of square hips on Lara:



Brian, who's been in love with Gordon's ever since his favorite childhood dog, Charlie, was in heaven as soon as we got there. The puppies loved him and I got the strong feeling that Lara found him to be a well-suited adoptive Dad for one of her puppies:



After we played with the puppies and mama dogs we chatted with Dagmar for quite some time about her background (she's been a breeder for 26 years) and her dogs. We were hooked! Our puppy (and fellow litter-mates) are due around May 10th. We will be able to take our puppy home when it is 8 weeks old. Four of the puppies from Lara's litter have already been spoken for so we will get our pick once those puppies have been selected. We're not sure yet if we'll get a boy or a girl, but we're VERY excited to meet the newest (and furriest) member of our family!