I have owned a couple of spayed English Setter bitches now, Lucy Liu in the black & white photo below was my introduction to the ‘spayed English Setter coat’ not through choice I will add, she had Endometriosis 4 days after her first litter and there was no choice but to spay her.
Lucy was my first English Setter and a show dog she had won a reserve cc, I applied for permission to show from the Kennel Club and it was granted. For those that don’t show dogs you can not show neutered dogs with out good reason. Lucy had a good reason.
For the first 6 months the coat wasn’t bad, Lucy had had her litter lost her coat which they do after a litter and the new coat came back through.The new coat was good, Lucy came back to the ring and won another reserve cc, then a CC this was about a year on. For about another year on I managed to control Lucy’s coat for the show ring, she looked amazing had loads of coat and never lost it because she was never going to have another season.
Lucy won another CC and a few more rcc’s, then the coat just kept growing and growing, and was getting thicker and thicker and harder to keep on top of for the show ring.
I did manage to make Lucy up into a Show Champion and that was her retired straight away from the show ring.