English Cocker Spaniel

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Personality

Cockers are known for their friendly, faithful, playful, quiet and affectionate natures. They are easily trained and make a good medium-sized family pet. Very few Cockers have temperament problems: in a 2002 survey, with a sample size of 487 Cockers, only one percent of the dogs were aggressive toward people and two percent were aggressive toward other dogs. English Cockers have a loving temperament and make excellent family pets. They will often bond to one person in a family.

Key Skills

A field-bred English Cocker Spaniel is an upland flushing dog. In performing this task there are some skills the dog must be trained to perform.

• Hup: This is the traditional command to sit and stay. To be an effective hunter the dog must comply with this command absolutely. When hupped the dog can be given direction called to the handler. The ability to hup a dog actively working a running bird allows the handler and any gunners to keep up without having to run.
• Retrieve to Hand: The majority of hunters, and all hunt test or field trial judges, require that a dog deliver a bird to hand, meaning that a dog will hold the bird until told to give it to the hunter directly.
• Quarter: Dogs must work in a pattern in front of the hunter seeking upland game birds. The dog must be taught to stay within gun range to avoid flushing a bird outside of shooting distance.
• Follow Hand Signals: Upland hunting involves pursuing wild game in its native habitat. Gun dogs must investigate likely covers for upland game birds. The dog must be responsive to hand signals in order for the hunter to be able to direct the dog into areas of particular interest.
• Steady: When hunting upland birds, a flushing dog should be steady to wing and shot, meaning that he sits when a bird rises or a gun is fired. He does this in order to mark the fall and to avoid flushing other birds when pursuing a missed bird.

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