Craighead Farm, home of gundog training school Mordor Gundogs 13 miles outside Perth in Scotland, is suspiciously quiet. When I meet founder Charlie Thorburn in his kitchen, I realise I am surprised by the scene. Instead of being greeted by a troop of quadrupeds barrelling through the door, paws skittering across the floor, there is only a wiggly cocker spaniel called Sausage and a black labrador called Chino. Both are placid and serene.
For the past 20 years, Thorburn, 45, has bred and trained spaniels and labradors for the 0.1 per cent, developing a client base that has included British government ministers, Russian oligarchs and Texan oil magnates. He enjoys a stellar reputation not because his dogs are the most talented or most beautiful in the world – though they are indeed both talented and beautiful – but because they are highly adaptable and highly reliable. These are animals that can fly on his clients’ jets, sail on their yachts, be fussed by their children one day and pick up game on shoots the next. And that, it turns out, is exactly what many boldface names and members of the three-comma club require.
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Thorburn has a relaxed ease about him, the sleeves of his checked shirt rolled up despite the Scottish winter chill. Educated at Harrow, where it mattered not whether your father was a king or a postman, he spent the school holidays with his family in Fife. He is now a father of two himself, and he and his wife Antonia run an ‘I’ll tell your father when he gets home’ kind of household. He expects his children to stand up when adults enter the room, and to shake their hands. This makes sense when you look at his dogs, who love and respect him in equal measure.
He founded Mordor in 2003, a ‘Sandhurst for dogs’, a year after his father Robin died. ‘If he’d been alive he would have said, “You need to get a proper job,”’ Thorburn says now. ‘No one in my family is entrepreneurial – they think I’m a bit of a cowboy.’ His trademark line is ‘you get out what you put in’, and defines his method with dogs as ‘back of a fag packet stuff: “keep it simple, stupid”’. Not rocket science, then. But it works.
Thorburn readily admits his dogs are not super-driven field trial champions (FTCH), bred to win competitions and produce the next generation of the same, but working pets. He doesn’t think it makes sense to try to have it both ways. Some trainers do, however. He mentions one, though not by name. ‘On one hand he’s trying to produce his next FTCH, on the other hand he’s talking about “Aga dogs”, and you can’t do both. They’re not compatible.’
Labrador Chino, a long-established working pet, wanders in looking for fuss and promptly puts her muddy paws on his cream sofa. ‘We are producing family dogs that come in with muddy feet,’ he says, getting up and ushering Chino through the kitchen door, ‘and get sent back into the kitchen… my wife is going to kill me. That’s life, isn’t it?’ He looks down at the sofa. ‘Shit happens, even to me. It’ll brush out.’
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Within a year of launching his business, Thorburn met a man who worked for Nicolas Saverys, CEO of his family’s shipping company Exmar, based in Antwerp. Saverys asked him for a springer spaniel, and unwittingly opened a door to a whole new world. Thanks to Saverys, and American clients including members of the Phipps family, who control $200 billion via the Bessemer Trust, Thorburn’s spider’s web of super-rich clients has spread. He has customers in Texas, Georgia and New York, as well as in Belgium, and sends 15–20 dogs to the US alone every year.
‘I become a friend and a family member, almost, because I’ve brought a family member into their lives,’ he says. ‘I don’t deal with these people on a business level – I ask about their children and grandchildren, and they ask me about my wife and my sons. I don’t necessarily talk to them about dogs – I talk to them about what they’re interested in, and I can talk on a level with them.’
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His network has continued to expand because people hear about his dogs and his personal approach, and they want in. ‘I am meeting the richer end of society because that’s just what happens,’ he reasons. ‘You get more popular, you put your prices up, you become more popular.’ As things stand there is a starting price of £10,000, though he reckons he could double that and still have plenty of business – especially for Labrador bitch— Yes, the most popular, and therefore by a small margin the most expensive of all. ‘If you looked at my heart, you’d see a liver and white springer boy; if you looked at my wallet, a Labrador bitches. They’re just what people want, no hassle.’
For many of his clients, he says, ‘The cost is completely irrelevant. It’s a blip – they’ve got bottles of wine worth more than the dog training.’ But as with any exclusive club, there are terms to which members must adhere. ‘Because the dogs are a finite commodity, if [clients] don’t abide by the rules then they don’t get the product.’
Those rules include actually being present at the dog’s handover, which might seem obvious, but it isn’t to all. ‘If someone says that they’re sending their driver to pick up the dog…’ he wrinkles his nose. ‘No, you come and get your dog or you pay me to bring you your dog. There has to be an interaction between you, me and your dog, so that I know you understand [how to work with your dog]. It’s not your driver’s dog.’
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 95. Click here to subscribe
