Gundog Training Forum

I used to train dogs for a lady with kennels full of show bred cockers . I could take my pick from among a couple of dozen of them. Despite having no lack of choice I found training them as gundogs to be not worth all the time and the effort. Yes , a few of them did make tolerably good working gundogs but even the best of them was not as good as a mediocre cocker of working breeding.

As another poster remarked some of them had a fairly good retrieve instinct but very little hunting instinct, some of them hunted .... after a fashion .... but did not like retrieving and some of them were yappers if placed in an exciting environment .... such as a shoot !

I read somewhere that in parts of Scandinavia show bred cockers were used for work and trialing and were fairly popular. Then they saw what a work bred cocker could do and are now in the process of "improving" their cockers.

There was a little devil of an American Cocker (one of those show bred dogs with hair sweeping the ground) at a training class I was at last week. I didn't get a chance to see it work but everyone who did see it seemed to have fell in love with this little dog.Maybe American show bred cockers still have some "go" in them ?

Wullie

There was a chap ran american cockers in trials for show gundogs and did well....

There were at least two American Cockers in the BASC Gamekeepers' classes at Crufts this year ... I was very surprised to see them

Fiona

vicky payne wrote:Helene is right...if you do some digging there was a cocker ftch, very influential who I think was a show/work mix but most show lines have had a lot of the instinct bred out.

That's probably Speckle of Ardoon - won the championship 3 times on the trot, a record not yet broken. A working bred cocker put to a show dog. She came at a time when cockers were going through a bad patch & had a reputation for weak hunting & poor retrieving, 2 qualities that she obviously excelled in. Even Erlandson wrote that she was a freak of nature. I just missed seeing her but a pro trainer told me that she wasn't very cockery in action - more like a small springer. Don't think she threw anything of similar quality. Des might know more, she was bred in Ireland.

Naj

^Or at that time the qualities was not lost totally. Before year 1958 all show dog had to do the Qualifying Certificate at field trials in order to get the CH-tittle. So they needed to do hunting, flushing and retrieving. Of course there was differences also that time but they weren't totally gone. Now the gap to the 1958 is over 50 years and in that time (probably 20 generations) and in that time things really chages. There is a significant difference what i couldn't believe when I purchased my first worker after owning show cockers all my life.

Des might know more, she was bred in Ireland.

If it was the winter I could just about see Ardoon from where I'm writing. William Charles Whitley Sloan was responsible for Speckle and I believe on paper she was bred by his wife Janet. During a foot and mouth outbreak round about time the dam was in season you couldn't transport any animal more than ten miles. Will travelled to work each day past a garden in which was this mental cocker dog that spent all it's time jumping up and off a tabel in the garden the better to see what was going on over the hedge. The dam was a "non working " working dog and the sire a show dog.
Keith tells the story in this link.
http://www.ardoon.com/speckle.htm

DesO'Neile wrote:

Des might know more, she was bred in Ireland.

If it was the winter I could just about see Ardoon from where I'm writing. William Charles Whitley Sloan was responsible for Speckle and I believe on paper she was bred by his wife Janet. During a foot and mouth outbreak round about time the dam was in season you couldn't transport any animal more than ten miles. Will travelled to work each day past a garden in which was this mental cocker dog that spent all it's time jumping up and off a tabel in the garden the better to see what was going on over the hedge. The dam was a "non working " working dog and the sire a show dog.
Keith tells the story in this link.
http://www.ardoon.com/speckle.htm

Thanks for commenting, Des, & putting up the link. Never realised she was so small - just goes to show what a good cocker can do, regardless of size. I always presumed that Keith was referring to Will Sloan when he wrote in his articles that he had referred a matter 'to higher authority', and then outlined the outcome.

Naj

That was a brilliant link Des. I've just been reading some of Keith Erlandson's stuff and find the history fascinating. Do you know where Speckle's offspring went to and what developed from her? Would love to be able to trace but not very good at all this computer searching stuff! Terry

Speckle is in all our working cocker pedigrees countless times. You can't find a cocker without her. She is the dam of Imp of Gwibernant who is the dam of Gwibernant Snake who was a star of her time.

We owe a lot today to those people of 50 and more years ago who tried so hard to keep the working cocker as a going animal.
I.M.O. they and those who followed after them made a great job of things.
Just 20 -30 years ago it was very rare to see a cocker at a shoot . Now I see them in the beating line, I see them picking up and I even see them as peg-dogs.

Wullie