Brandy is our home and field companion throughout the year. She's just 27 lbs. of black and white terror on the ground and a 27-lb. pillow on the living room sofa. Brandy came to us from the Roebuck Kennels in New York in the spring of 1989. Especially bred for field work, the English Cocker Spaniel has a long history as a game dog. The name itself derives from "cocking dog" used in the British Isles to hunt woodcock in the marshy thickets and bottomlands. Unlike the dogs bred for the show bench, field cockers have the eyes set tight to the head, a minimum of feathering on the ears and legs, and a broader muzzle for a better grip on the birds. At one time, English Cockers and Springer Spaniels were a single breed, distinguished in trials only on the basis of size. The separate breed classification occurred early in the Twentieth Century.
Cockers are hunted as flushing dogs, that is, they are expected to find birds on the ground and rouse them to flight within range of the gun. To accomplish this, the dogs are trained to cast to and fro before the hunter within a very short range, say 10 to 20 yards. Birds flushed at this range generally offer a shootable target for an additional 10 to 20 yards. The hunter detects "birdiness" in the dog by observation of the movement of the dog and its general state of excitement. Brandy is an excellent hunter in ruffed grouse and woodcock cover. She also does well in row crop hunting for pheasants. In cattail marshes and bramble thickets, she goes under the cover rather than through it as my pudelpointer would have done. The toughest cover for her to penetrate is dense native tall prairie grasses. She is an excellent retriever on land and water for game up to the size of a cock pheasant. As the photo below indicates, the black and white coat color darkens as the dog grows older.
For more information on English Cockers as field dogs, have a look at Kenneth Roebuck's book Gun-Dog Training Spaniels and Retrievers, Stackpole Books, 1982.
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Date created: 12/26/95 Last modified: 11/21/96 Copyright © 1995, 1996 George R. Spangler George Spangler GRS@finsandfur.fw.umn.edu