Gordon Setter Heart Update (November 2025)

The breed has been actively seeking data on heart cases for some time now, particularly Dilated Cardiomyopathy. This can affect older dogs but the concern with Gordons has been the number of younger dogs suffering from this. This year has also seen an increase in related dogs being affected.  Data is still being sought for the Nottingham University heart survey and breeders/owners are encouraged to report any health condition to the Breed Health Co Ordinator via the health report form.

Link to heart survey;

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=7qe9Z4D970GskTWEGCkKHuNEfwxPupdLiiB-Q2WngXRUREJCTUxPR1k1MDcyQUVZM005VDI0VTFFQi4u

The breed is an active discussion together and with external organisations regarding next steps. As some dogs affected have been part of a family with a parent or other siblings affected, owners are being encouraged to send DNA to the Canine Genetics Centre to save for future research. 

For further information on this please contact the Gordon Setter Breed Health Co Ordinator, Kathryne Wrigley RVN at kathrynewrigley@hotmail.co.uk

Below is a statement from a breeder/owner explaining the devastation of DCM in her dog family. . 

A BREED WITH A BIG HEART

Geraldine Cove-Print

Setters! 

My love of setters began when at 16 an Irish Setter came into my life. Since then, I have always had multiple dogs of various breeds but always a setter at my side. I waited some time before my first Gordon Setter, I wanted one from a particular breeder and friend and eventually my wish came true and Ghillie joined the family in the winter of 2018. Our home is busy as I run Independent Setter Rescue & Rehome, rehoming, on average 100 dogs a year and each one comes into my home for assessment before we find the very best home for that individual.

Ghillie proved to be everything her breeder, Dorothy Park, told me she would be. Independent, intelligent and a challenge! When she was three years old, I decided I would love to have a son or a daughter from her and in July 2022 nine beautiful pups were born. At 8 weeks I decided I wanted to have a dog and a bitch, I couldn’t choose between them. Jaffa and LouLou stayed.

In late 2024 one of my Irish Setters, Ernest, was diagnosed with Dilated Cardiomyopathy, at seven years old I accepted the news. His dear father had collapsed with DCM at seven and had died while being scanned four years previously. I blamed genetics and bad luck. 

Fast forward to January 2025 and my nightmare began. Jaffa woke me in the night coughing, not the distinctive sound of kennel cough but a wet cough from deep down. Up to that night he had been a normal, full on sorta fella, I took him to the Vet the next day. As she listened to his heart, she looked up at me with concern in her eyes. His heart rate was erratic, and she felt he was in heart failure. I was in shock, she led him away to have a heart scan and warned me the news could be the very worst. Later that morning she confirmed his heart was dilated and the rhythm was “all over the place”. Dilated Cardiomyopathy entered my life again and it was to take Jaffa’s. 

Two days later a Holter Monitor which recoded the heart rhythms over a 24-hour period was fitted under a close-fitting tunic to Jaffa. The report came back from the Cardio specialist it was devastating; my beautiful, gentle two-year-old Gordon Setter was given a prognosis of up to 6 weeks more life. How could this be? Dorothy and I talked late into the night, she has a history of Gordons that runs into more than half a century and never had she encountered DCM.

The daily task of medication became automatic and the watching and waiting I hated myself for. I began to investigate; there is history of some heart issues with the Gordon Setter but very few at such a young age. DCM is mostly seen in all larger breeds after 7 years, not inevitable, but then neither is cancer. 

Could it be the diet? There are several reports from the USA of grain free diets being a possible cause or contributing factor to cardiac issues in dogs, but none put their money on the worldwide table of dog food manufacture as a risk. I had fed my dogs the same food for the last six years, that day I changed the food. It was a wheat gluten free recipe where peas and legumes were high on the list of ingredients.

Jaffa’s weight dropped, he was running a marathon every day just to stay alive. On the 11th of July 2025 Jaffa died, suddenly, and my heart broke. He had stayed as long as he could, 6 months instead of 6 weeks.

August 2025, Ghillie was lethargic and seemed troubled. She has always been a scavenger so off we went to the Vet expecting a diagnosis of inappropriate scoffing! That same moment as the Vet looked up from her stethoscope told me what I didn’t want to hear. A scan and a Holter recording told the same story, DCM with complications. Again, the tablets, the waiting and watching.

September 2025 LouLou has her annual vaccination, I had discussed with my Vet as to how I could best watch over LouLou and her siblings. We decided that the Cardiopet proBNP test while not accurate could be useful as an indicator to involve more research, mostly due to cost, the blood test is around £160 whereas a scan is £350-450. For LouLou the result was not good and a scan and Holter were arranged which indicated DCM.

One look at these puppies’ pedigree will show, like so many other Gordons, a multi-line descent involving well established UK and other worldwide breeders.

I want to thank our breed health coordinator Katheryn Wrigley for her input and support; she told me of the online survey that has been running for some time. Personally, I feel it’s composition could be looked at again to provide more detail, but it was a beginning.

What we know about DCM is…we don’t know enough! 

Most health issues start with symptoms, but with DCM by the time you see signs of distress the chances are you are too late to support a failing heart. From personal experience I can say that Jaffa, Ghillie and LouLou showed no signs at all, not a flat day, not a cough, no loss of weight, they appeared to be boisterous, healthy, shiny coated, mischief filled delights with energy to spare. Frankly, that is what is so scary.

You may say a heart scan will tell you what you need to know before breeding, but a heart scan is like an MOT, it is a snapshot of that moment. It is no guarantee that your dog will remain clear of heart issues or, most importantly, that in your dog’s DNA there may be a link that could impact on the next generation.

DCM is a massive threat to the breed, only by moving towards genome sequencing for Gordons as a specific breed can we hope to breed healthy dogs. There is already a facility to store DNA from swabs but without the financial backing of breed clubs, work cannot begin. 

As the breeder of the litter that clearly had DCM issues, I notified all the puppy owners, we have formed a support group and because of early knowledge there are four more from that litter that have a chance to make older bones now they have been diagnosed and are on prescribed medication and supplements. I cannot thank those owners enough; they have been brave and committed even though every step has driven fear into us all. Please do not discount this as being a “one off”, it isn’t. We have to face this with honesty and courage, turning a blind eye is not an option if we want our beautiful breed to survive and thrive.

Geraldine Cove-Print

Following discussion with the KC Health team regarding elbow status,please see the summary from Alison Skipper. I can confirm that elbow scoring has now been moved to Best Practice. 
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Elbow scoring. You reported that the breed community would prefer this to sit within BP rather than GP. We discussed this situation during the meeting. We agreed that current scientific thought is that there is a similar pathology underlying hip and elbow dysplasia and that therefore a breed which has issues with one condition is also likely to have issues with the other – this is certainly true of many gundog breeds that have extensive testing data for both. Speaking anecdotally, many dogs with ED show few signs until later life but can then have significant issues with elbow arthritis, so this can be an overlooked source of discomfort in older dogs.

Originally, we had linked hip and elbow scoring and placed them in the same category (GP or BP) in breeds where the evidence suggested that both were advisable. However, during our discussion we acknowledged that elbow scoring, unlike hip scoring, is not yet widespread within your breed. While we would still like to encourage breeders to screen elbows and hips at the same time going forwards, we realise that there will therefore be dogs of current breeding age that have already been hip scored, and we appreciate that breeders will be reluctant to subject these animals to a separate elbow screening. Therefore, we agreed that it was more suitable to place elbow screening within BP at present, and to clarify that this expectation applies to future screening decisions rather than to older animals that have already been hip scored. Since elbow radiographs are less tricky to position correctly than hip radiographs, this shouldn’t add much time to the procedure, although it will of course incur an extra cost. We will be altering the introductory wording on the relevant sections of the KC website to explain that while testing requirements are in transition some dogs may not have completed all tests within the Health Standard. Breeders can refer to this wording (or this letter) when discussing health tests with puppy buyers. Once we have more data on the prevalence of ED in Gordon Setters within the UK, we can then alter the Health Standard categorisation accordingly (i.e., remove it altogether if there is no problem with ED in the breed, or move it back to GP if there is actually a major problem)

Outcome: Elbow scoring to be moved to Best Practice, as requested; this can be reviewed when we have more UK data.''