Up North in Fryslân
Our names are Mike Brown and Mary Winter and we live in The Netherlands.
Being already in our mid thirties, having 2 kids and 3 cats we decided it was time to expand our family with a dog. After investigating different breeds we felt it had to be an English Setter.
Needless to say but we fell in love with this magnificent breed.
So our lives with English Setters began in 1984 when we bought our first male who we named Baron and our journey to experience the elegance, soundness and all around beauty of the English Setter started which now continues to go on for over 30 years.
For us, in all, the breed also known as ' Gentleman by Nature ' could have not been better described overall when it concerns their sweet and gentle personality! Needless to say we fell in love with this magnificent breed.
In 1985 we bought a female named Goldie from Bob and Lynda Gall (Lynann) and in 1987 four more puppies which came from Kay Monaghan (Kadon), Pam Lefever (Brasswinds) and Tom and Roberta Williams (Willglen) which joined us in Holland.
After this we have bred, co-bred and/or imported several other English Setters. Since we now had 6 English Setters and we had serious thoughts about starting breeding ourselves we decided to registrar our first FCI kennel name FANCHON in 1987 (owners Mike Brown and Mary Winter) and second kennel name DUNLEY (owner Mary Winter) that followed in 1993. Some of these imported pure American bloodline dogs became our foundation, which now goes back to their 4Th. -6Th. generation ancestors.
Both kennel names refer to the house up North in Fryslân which has a 6 acres fenced in meadow that serves as the dogs and other animals playground as these kennel names indicate the freedom we offer our dogs and/or other animals letting them live their lives as free as possible.
House and Rainbow View on the Playground
During the years 1985 - 1995 we worked closely together with the Gall's and imported several dogs that came from co-bred litters and as from 1987 up till now with Kay Monaghan. It also brought us good friendships that lasted for over 2 decades and still continuous. We and our friends and our families visited each other several times.
The latest of our two dogs, Sara Lee and Milo are born in September 2007 which is from a combination bred by Kay Monaghan and Mike Brown.
We are proud to have been the first English Setter breeders in Europe that never ever bred any dogs after our first litter born in 1990 that are not BAER tested for deafness and for testing all of our Offspring before placing or selling any of these puppies. More information that concerns health issues and our involvement with the genetic disease Deafness as well our breeding policies will be posted or added later in sections Our dogs, Health and Subpage Deafness.
Our strive for a more healthy breed population cannot be found in the quantity of our bred litters that we have bred during the past 20 years but as we believe ourselves in the quality of our dogs. We believe less is better and for that reason we did not breed each year or sometimes even with interceptions of a few years passing by without any litter at all and than only when being convinced a certain combination could have the potential we still are looking for and when we believed it could bring us better dogs and be a asset to the breed we decided to do a breeding.
Mary and/or I have been members for over 2o years of various English Setter Clubs including the Dutch English Setter Club (VES), Pointer und Setter and the ESAA.