British trained gundogs: the envy of the world

British-trained gundogs are growing in popularity with sportsmen around the globe but what is it about our home-bred dogs that appeals so much asks Eleanor Doughty?

The first time I catch up with Charlie Thorburn, the gundog trainer to the 1%, he has just joined the M6 Toll and has been awake for a long time. Thorburn is on his way home to Perthshire from New York where he has been delivering a trio of fully trained dogs to their new homes with wealthy families across the USA. This jet-setting element of his very busy life forms a considerable part of the gundog producing empire, Mordor Gundogs, that he runs from the home and kennels that he built from scratch 13 miles outside Perth. (You might like to read when to start training a gundog puppy

British trained gundogs

Thorburn, the son of an Army officer, swapped a place at Sandhurst for training dogs. He has been producing labradors and spaniels for both domestic and international dog-loving, sporting families for the past 25 years. Though the UK market dominates his business, the international element – peopled by owners of American football teams, shipping tycoons, oligarchs and members of some of the world’s richest and most anonymous families – is ever growing. They know Thorburn as a friend, a man that provides them with their new four-legged family members: dogs bred not to be field trial champions but as working pets that live in the house and work under a gun on the smartest shoots all over the world.

With ample resources, they will do anything for their dogs. Thorburn’s roll call of anecdotes is legion: he describes one client dropping his dog off for residential training by private jet en route to sail his yacht across the Atlantic, another flying in to see their dog for half an hour, and the time when he was driven 120 miles west of Moscow to a James Bond-style lair with a police escort. In his kitchen at Mordor, as one of his seven house dogs, a beloved cocker spaniel called Sausage, wiggles on her bed, his wife teases him about calling American Airlines just ‘American’, such is his jet-setting.

Mordor’s international business was kick-started in 2004 when a man who worked for the Belgian shipping magnate Nicolas Saverys met Thorburn and his dogs out shooting. “I got a call from him after, saying ‘My boss wants a springer’. He subsequently had five dogs from me. I ended up going to his son’s engagement party,” he says. The Saverys family are loyal Mordor clients and have spread the word. “That’s how it rolls,” explains Thorburn. “You’re in that network: you meet people when you’re dropping a dog off for someone they know; they love the dog and they want one as well.”

This early encounter opened his eyes to a new world and soon after he sold a dog to a gentleman from Georgia, a member of “one of the oldest, richest American families” who gave Thorburn his first experience of a client having their own plane. They agreed to meet on the drive to the airport. “I was sitting there in my pickup, and he wasn’t there,” Thorburn remembers. “I rang him, worried we were going to miss the flight. He roared with laughter, saying ‘Hey Charlie, it’s my plane – it ain’t gonna go anywhere without me.’ He was a lifelong friend until he died in 2023.”

At around the same time, Thorburn got to know the Connecticut vet Dr Sheldon ‘Shelly’ Steinmetz at the Scottish Game Fair at Scone Palace. Steinmetz studied in the USA before completing his doctorate at Glasgow University, and when he and Thorburn met he was in the market for a labrador. The following year, the Steinmetzes received their first Mordor dog. “Here we are, 20-plus years and about 10 dogs later, and I’m godfather to one of his children,” says Steinmetz down the line from Kentucky, where he has a farm. “We have grown to be very good friends; he’s like my younger brother.” Steinmetz has influenced scores of other Mordor dogs on to his American network, and about a decade ago Darren Beylouni, the owner of 14 car dealerships and a commercial real estate business on the east coast of the USA, joined their ranks. Since then, he has had four Mordor dogs. The latest, 18-month-old cocker spaniel Waffle, arrived in New York with Thorburn in January and has settled down a treat at the Beylounis’ house. “It takes a few weeks for them to get to know you,” he says of the necessary adjustment phase. “But it’s like Waffle has been here forever.”

Trusted sources

Thorburn might well be the largest supplier of gundogs to ultra-high-net-worth individuals but he is not the first to dabble in that market. Eric Burchell of Bournepark Gundogs, now based near Arnhem on the Dutch-German border, made his first sale to a member of the global elite – a wealthy Spaniard with estates in central Spain – in 1990. “I used to advertise in Shooting Times,” he recalls. “Somebody contacted me and wanted to know if I had a particular dog for sale, and he came from London to look at it. I shot some game over the dog and he asked if I would have a problem if the dog went to his client in Madrid.” The deal was done, and in the 22 years from 1990 the same family bought as many dogs from Burchell, whose business is in supplying spaniels and labradors at all stages of their training journey from both his own litters and other trusted sources.

Since 1990 Burchell has exported dogs to 10 American states and 35 countries: mostly gundogs for fieldwork, as well as explosives and drug detection dogs. In his experience, money is not generally a factor for such clients “if you come with a good CV and they’ve heard of you”.

Second-generation trainer and triallist Robin Watson of Tibea Gundogs, now based in Yorkshire having previously worked in the USA, breeds and sells labradors and spaniels in a similar way – some from his own litters and others from third parties. “You can only fully train so many yourself over a couple of years,” Watson says. Last year he sold a whole litter abroad but admits this can present logistical difficulties. “I sell as many as I can fully trained but it’s a twoyear training process.”

Language issues

Since the vast majority of Watson, Burchell and Thorburn’s clients speak English as the international business language, it is rare that things get lost in translation. “Dogs don’t speak English or any language: it’s about the way you say it,” says Thorburn, adding that much of the time, it’s not so much the language but the accent: “If someone in New York buys a dog from me called Polly, she’s ‘Polly’ to me but ‘Parly’ to him.” Burchell echoes this view: “When I was working in Africa with landmine detection dogs, much of the English of the people I was working with wasn’t great but they got by. We train with body gestures as well so you can do certain tasks without speaking.”

Language is not the only potential hurdle that must be overcome: the dogs must also be transported safely. Burchell has worked with shipping agents for almost 30 years, while Thorburn has a close relationship with the team at Airpets, the company that organises the movement of dogs out of Heathrow. The red tape involved, he says, is more like a pale pink: not terribly onerous, and only requiring a vet to fill a form in. However, in August last year the USA changed its rules on dogs arriving into the country: now they must be six months old with a rabies jab to travel. For those like Watson who don’t have the facility to keep an entire litter until six months, this is likely to have a negative effect. “Hopefully it will change again,” he says.

But what is it about our British-trained gundogs that appeals so much abroad? “First of all, the heritage – they go back to the 1850s,” believes Burchell. And then there’s the style: American labradors, he says, are often “three inches bigger, four inches longer and run with their tails up in the air”. They vary temperamentally, too, says Watson. “A lot are fully wired up. They make a noise, they’re unruly and they’re just not a good pet. They’re all trained on the e-collar, and their competitions are straight-line stuff,” he explains. “They’ve got to go a long way on retrieves, so the dog is more of an athlete. But we know that if our labradors’ and cockers’ hearts are in it, they’re going to do it whatever their size.”

For his part, Dr Steinmetz, for 38 years a vet, has seen a lot of dogs in his time. He finds a great deal of consistency in Thorburn’s dogs: “Even within the great variety of personalities, they are all well above the average.” There’s nothing perfect in life, he says “but I think Charlie’s dogs are just better dogs from top to bottom than most people can believe they’re going to get, dog after dog.”

I wonder whether some of Burchell, Watson and Thorburn’s clients aren’t missing out on the best bit when they get a fully trained dog – doing the training themselves. Watson agrees but adds that his high-net-worth clients “don’t have the time or sometimes the knowledge to train a dog”. Indeed, he advises those that approach him to pursue the fully trained route. Darren Beylouni cheerfully admits that he hasn’t the time or energy, with two children and a busy work schedule, to train his dogs from scratch himself and he has been extremely happy with all of his Mordor dogs. “I’d never purchased a finished dog before I met Charlie but it has been amazing.”

A good dog is key

Beylouni is a keen shot, and having a good dog is key to a proper sporting day. The day before we speak he has been quail hunting in Texas with another family who have Mordor dogs. “That weekend everyone was going crazy about this black labrador called Magnus,” he says. “Everyone thought that we wouldn’t have been able to find these birds if that dog wasn’t there. Magnus’s owner simply said: ‘I got him from Charlie Thorburn.’”