Meet Breeder Member: Firelight Setters, Lynn Dee Galey

To spare Lynn Dee Galey, our customary interviewer, from talking to herself more than usual, we invited Randy Lawrence, a retired teacher, to do the deed. For 19 years, he wrote the “Wingshooting Column” in Sporting Clays magazine, and his work has appeared in numerous bird gun and gun dog publications including Shooting Sportsman, Grey’s, The Double Gun Journal, Pointing Dog Journal, RGS, and Upland Almanac as well as three anthologies of short stories and essays: Afield, Pheasant Tales, and A Breed Apart.  Randy has had Ryman-type setters since 1986. You can read Randy’s blog at http://www.longhuntersrest.com

Lynn Dee Galey, Firelight Setters, Michigan

RymanSetters.com breeder member and co-founder Lynn Dee Galey relocated in the summer of 2019 to northern LP Michigan, where she shares her home in the grouse woods with seven Firelight Ryman Setters.  Her 2019 litter out of Firelight Kate was being delivered to their new homes as Lynn Dee sat for this interview the last week in August.

Please tell us a little about your occupation and any other hobbies or interests?

“I am a retired psychologist.  I developed and worked in intensive programs specializing in kids who simply were not finding any success in school or in life.  Many of the kids were on their way to or from jail or hospitals.  About eight years ago, I realized I was burned out to the point that I could not give 100%, which was an absolute necessity to be effective in that job, so I retired.”

Lynn Dee laughs. “I was too young and too poor to retire, but I did it anyway.  I wanted to have time to travel and to hunt.  I’ve never looked back.”

Galey has financed that traveling and hunting with a nest egg and cobbling together several odd jobs. “I sold my farm in Vermont, moved to Kansas for several years where I became passionate about quail hunting.  From Kansas, I also made extended hunting trips to Montana.  In between, I marketed organic produce grown on my property.”

At the local farmers’ markets, Lynn Dee also sold her own homemade breads and other baked goods, including artisanal dog biscuits!  Strawberries from her farm were the inspiration for, and ingredients in, Rhuberry, a strawberry-rhubarb beer crafted by the Kansas Territory Brewing Company of Washington, KS.

Galey keeps her hand in her former profession as well.  “I work a few weeks a year online with the company that oversees standardized testing, like SAT and GRE’s and public school tests.  I look at test validity and reliability through performance evaluations.” 

In her spare time, Lynn Dee enjoys woodworking and wood finishing projects, and has rediscovered her love of playing the guitar.  “Not long after I moved to Michigan, I found a Guild guitar online and drove an hour and a half to see it and play it before bringing it home for keeps.” 

The guitar playing is a carry-over from connections she once made with students, as is her love of cooking.  “I used to teach all my students to cook.  I told them that if they could cook and invite people over for dinner, they could always make friends.” 

Lynn Dee laughs, remembering sharing her guitar playing with students.  “I told the boys that if they learned to cook, they could always make friends and if they learned to play guitar, they could always meet girls!”

How did you come to have Rymans and how long have you had them? 

“My dad hunted old-fashioned, Irish Setter gun dogs.  Once in a while, he would raise a litter.  Fifty years ago this fall, Dad handed me a little collar and said, ‘Go put this on your favorite pup. That was my beginning.  Unfortunately, that was the point in time in when Irish setters were quickly becoming victims of their popularity.”

From there, Galey moved to Gordon Setters and spent the next quarter century hunting and showing dual bench/field type Gordon Setters.  It was a natural extension of her “handler for hire” sideline in high school, working for a local veterinarian, earning her chops in the show ring, and eventually handling an Affenpinscher, of all things, to a Best in Breed title at Westminster.

Thankfully, no Affenpinscher was ever going to intrude on Lynn Dee’s love affair with gun dogs.  “I was fortunate to get show championships on several of my (Gordons),” Galey recalls.  “We also ran in, and I judged, AKC hunt tests.  My breed club ran field trials, and I spent many hours in the saddle following dogs at those trials.”

Through all of this, Lynn Dee lived in and traveled New England, hunting her Gordon Setters on grouse and woodcock.  “During the week, after work, I could get out a couple days because I lived near some pheasant release sites.  On the weekend, I traveled north to hunt.  At that time, there had not been many dual champion Gordons, and I was fortunate to own offspring from those good dogs.  Sometimes both parents of mine were dual champions.”

Meanwhile, Galey read avidly in sporting magazines and began thinking about the broader gene pool of field-bred English setters.  But even then, she had a very specific setter in mind. “I was very dissatisfied with where any of the show lines of English setters were going,” Galey says.  “I was not interested in the field trial English setters.  The Rymans seemed to be a good match for me.

“My first Ryman came from a small breeder in Pennsylvania.  He was an avid grouse hunter, one who would occasionally breed for his own needs.  Meg, my first Ryman, actually had Wing Commander Llewellins behind her.  Meg was a really good one and had the traits I admire to this day.  She was an excellent bird finder, fast, exciting to watch, and completely natural.”

If you were to write a mission statement for your breeding program, what would it include?

Her father’s Irish Setters, her long work with dual-type Gordons, the revelation that was Meg and the Firelights to come all have formed Galey’s current breeding program. “Most of all, for 7 generations now, I want to produce bird dogs that are talented, she says.  “I want them to have drive and intensity, excel at bird finding, and to have such strong natural instincts that they develop reliable staunchness just through learning to handle wild birds….all while maintaining the signature Ryman look and level-headed disposition. I also have a bit of a thing about tails in that I really like my dogs to have a higher tail when on point, always above the topline, 10:00 or 11:00 is ideal.”

Where do you hunt and what is your favorite bird species to hunt?

Galey says, “I hunt the Northwoods across New England and the Lake States for grouse and woodcock, the Kansas plains for quail, pheasant, and prairie chicken.  We go to Montana for sharptails, Huns, and pheasants.  When I lived in Kansas, I had the luxury of staying in Montana for six to eight weeks at a time, running dogs on wild game virtually every day.”

Of the species you hunt, which one do you feel is the most valuable for evaluating your dogs’ abilities, and why? 

Lynn Dee took some time forming an answer to this question, finally saying, “For my dogs, I can really see what I’ve got when I’m hunting bobwhite.  For one thing, you can really see how the dog runs and hunts in plains quail hunting.  To find coveys , they must cover some ground in Kansas.  I want to see how they cover the ground – their speed and athleticism – and how intelligently they seek cover.  Are they smart enough to cut the wind, use whatever breeze there is?  How quickly do they learn to recognize places where quail could be?” 

But Lynn Dee says that’s when the second evaluation phase kicks in, after the covey rise is shot.  “Is the dog willing to hunt singles, or will the covey just blow his mind and send her tearing around, hunting on her own, 200 yards off?  Is she willing to work right there with me in a focused area?  Does she have the nose and search tenacity to locate that little 5-ounce, air-washed bird tucked away in the grass?”

Galey laughs when reminded of the old southern quail hunter’s admonition to “smoke a cigarette after a covey lifts,” giving singles time to put some scent down.  “I don’t stop, but I do go slowly when working singles.  I work hard at marking where birds go after the covey flush, but I don’t rush right there.  If we make one pass and don’t pick them up, we go back through.”

Galey says she will often stand in one central spot where she marked birds down and lets the dogs work off her. She is evaluating how willing the dog is to stay composed, stay focused, to work in partnership rather than dash around on its own program, bonkers over birds in a bunch.

Lynn Dee believes that quail also allow her to evaluate a dog’s mouth on the fetch.  “A prairie bobwhite is a little bitty bird.  Some dogs, when you clean the quail, it’s as if someone drove spikes into it.”  A naturally soft mouth and a quiet mind to manage that mouth are two qualities Galey is always looking for.

 

 

Do you keep a journal or log of your hunts?

“I don’t keep a journal or log.  However, I do carry a pocket camera, and I try as often as I can to make a sort of photographic journey.”

Galey says, “I love taking pictures of my dogs on wild birds.  I can go back to any photo and immediately tell you everything about where it was taken and what the dog was doing. When I’m hunting and in the swing of things, I would just as soon shoot pictures as birds,” laughs Galey, “after I’ve gotten to shoot over points.”

Lynn Dee uses the camera as a way to structure hunts.  “I won’t be the third gun in a party.  Two guns is plenty.  Because I prefer to, and usually do, hunt with myself, three people in the field just feels too busy.  I’d much better trail just behind the other two Guns.  It just feels safer, and I’m able to enjoy the challenge of trying to get some good photos of the dog work.” 

 

Tell us about your training philosophy and approach to dog work on birds when hunting

For years, Galey headed up a training group on her Vermont farm.  She always makes the joke that hers had had the least “training” of any dogs in the group.  But that is in step with her philosophy of breeding the truly natural hunting dog. “The only training I  actually do is basic house manners,” she insists. I teach ‘come,’ ‘kennel,’ and ‘wait.’  ‘Wait’ is like a “stay” except the dog knows it’s going to be released.  It’s used at doorways, when letting dogs out of crates, exiting the vehicle, whatever. 

But why not just teach “Stay?”  ‘Stay’ doesn’t do it for me; ‘stay’ means don’t move, and don’t move ever until I tell you otherwise.  That’s not what I’m after.”

Galey couples “wait” with use of the word “no.”  “No is a caution,” she says, “a reminder that the dog is to ‘wait,’ to stand there.  ‘No’ becomes a reminder cue that helps establish the original command.”

That’s all, folks.  Lynn Dee tells us that, “in the field, I just take them hunting and I let their instincts develop.  The birds are what teach the dog.  When I start the young pup, it just means walks in the fields or woods. These are dogs that want to hunt with us;  they are not going to run off.  They want to learn how to keep track of us, navigate out in the cover, and, when they get big enough and old enough and we take them in the right places, they will find birds in partnership with us.  They will learn from where they find birds, and they will hit that kind of cover in the future.  Every wild bird they find teaches them habitat recognition and manners on that bird.”

Galey is adamant that her dogs are staunch on point.  “I flush the bird, not they,” she says.  “I do not shoot any birds that the dog doesn’t properly handle.” 

Lynn Dee is the first to admit that her training methods are not for everyone, that since retirement, her arranging her life around getting into the field has meant sufficient reps in the field, sufficient wild bird contacts to develop dogs in this manner.  In her program, this also eliminates the need to train “whoa” as a support to staunchness in the yard, “with the dog teetering on a barrel, desperate not to hang himself.”

“When I hunt Kansas,” she says, “and Montana,  three to four dogs run at a time.  That provides a lot of backing situations.  The dogs learn how to back naturally and they are very aware of each other.  When a young dog wants to creep, I hold a finger out and remind with ‘whoa,’ cautioning them not to creep in. They learn ‘whoa’ in context.”

But what about the dog that would rather run than hunt, that isn’t innately composed enough to easily learn to work with the Gun, to back naturally, to quickly learn how to learn in the home and in the field?  Galey laughs.  “I don’t own that dog or breed to him.”

Since retirement has afforded much more quality time in the field, Galey sees it not just as a means to train, but a vital tool for assessing bloodstock and for steadily climbing the learning curve as a breeder and handler.  “I’ve learned as much about hunting the Ryman type setter in the past six or seven years as I did the twenty before that.  I learned on grouse in Vermont, but man, being able to get the dogs into so many different birds, running so many different kinds of cover, is an entirely differently education for both the dogs and me.”