45 Fun Facts About American Cocker Spaniel

What job was the Cocker Spaniel originally bred to do in the field?

Flushing birds from cover is the spaniel's trade: a Cocker noses through dense brush, sends the game into the air for the hunter, then brings back what falls.

The American Cocker Spaniel holds what distinction within its AKC show group?

It is the smallest, and Time in 1940 put its rise down to being as at home on city streets as in the field.

The first spaniel in America is said to have arrived aboard which ship in 1620?

It was another 258 years before the AKC registered its first Cocker Spaniel.

Which part of a Cocker Spaniel do vets advise checking regularly because it becomes infected so easily?

Ears are the weak spot: the long, floppy flaps trap moisture in the canal, so yeast and bacteria thrive.

The American Spaniel Club, formed in 1881, holds what distinction?

Oldest US breed organisation for dogs, it was founded in 1881, three years before the American Kennel Club that now registers its breed.

Paul Sperry copied the grooves in his Cocker Spaniel's paws to invent which non-slip footwear?

The boat shoe: Sperry had slipped overboard from his own deck, then saw his dog run over ice without sliding and cut the same grooves into a rubber sole.

What sets the American Cocker apart from its English cousin?

Domed skull, shorter muzzle: American breeders bred for that head, and by the 1920s the two types had visibly drifted apart.

Under the American breed standard, how is a Cocker Spaniel's tail traditionally presented?

Docked short is what the standard describes, and the breed club defends it as a working feature of a hunting dog, not a cosmetic one.

Which talk-show host honoured her late Cocker Spaniel, Sophie, on a 2008 show exposing puppy mills?

Oprah Winfrey had Sophie for 13 years; in 2009 she took her next Cocker puppy, Sadie, home from a Chicago no-kill shelter.

Which breed ended the Cocker Spaniel's second reign as America's most popular dog in 1991?

Labrador Retriever registrations passed the Cocker's in 1991, and the Lab then stayed on top for 31 years until the French Bulldog overtook it.

Which breed knocked the Cocker Spaniel off the top of the US popularity list in the early 1950s?

Beagle registrations took the lead in 1953, though the spaniel won the top spot back in the 1980s.

At Westminster, which group must a Cocker Spaniel win to reach the Best in Show ring?

Sporting: the breed is judged alongside setters and pointers because it was bred to work game birds for the gun.

Which American Cocker won Best in Show at Westminster in both 1940 and 1941?

Ch. My Own Brucie, a black Cocker owned by Herman Mellenthin, won in 1940 and again in 1941, and the AKC credits his double with helping popularise the breed.

The Cocker Afterglow Miami Ink won Best in Show at which event in 2017?

Crufts, in Birmingham: the American breed won Britain's biggest dog show, though it had not won Westminster, on home soil, since 1954.

Where did the American Cocker Spaniel rank in AKC registrations in 2024?

32nd, a long way from the top spot it held through the 1940s and again in the 1980s.

Which senator's 1952 TV address became the Checkers speech, after his family's Cocker Spaniel?

Richard Nixon, accused of misusing a campaign fund, told viewers the children loved the spotted puppy and that, whatever anyone said about it, the family was going to keep it.

Who named the family's Cocker Spaniel Checkers?

Six-year-old Tricia chose the name, as her father told the nation: the puppy arrived in a crate from Texas, 'black and white, spotted', and she called it Checkers.

The Checkers speech borrowed its dog anecdote from which earlier president's talk?

Roosevelt's Fala remarks of 1944 mocked a claim that he had sent a destroyer to fetch his Scottie; the Checkers speech, eight years later to the day, reused the trick.

In the Checkers speech, the senator said his wife wore a respectable Republican what?

Cloth coat, not mink: the line cast the couple as ordinary people of modest means, not a family living off a secret fund.

Which president angered dog lovers by giving away Feller, a Cocker Spaniel puppy sent as a Christmas gift in 1947?

Harry S. Truman passed the unsolicited puppy to the White House physician, dog lovers attacked him as anti-canine, and Feller ended his days on a farm in Ohio.

Which of these disqualifies a Cocker Spaniel under the AKC standard?

Excess height: a male over 15½ inches or a female over 14½ is disqualified, while a dog that is too short is only penalised.

The AKC judges American Cockers in three colour classes: black, parti-colour and which one?

ASCOB means Any Solid Color Other than Black, so every shade from cream to dark red shares one ring while black dogs get their own.

The medium-long silky fur hanging from an American Cocker's legs and belly is called what?

Feathering is the show-ring word, and the AKC standard wants the chest, abdomen and legs well feathered but never so heavily that the coat hides the dog's outline.

Tubby the Cocker Spaniel was the only victim of which bridge collapse?

Tacoma Narrows Bridge: in 1940 an engineering professor reached the abandoned car to rescue him, but the terrified dog bit him, and he turned back just before the span fell.

A study of North American vet hospitals found the American Cocker Spaniel had the highest rate of which eye disease?

Glaucoma: fluid that cannot drain raises the pressure inside the eye, which damages the optic nerve and can blind a dog unless it is brought down fast.

Nutritional dilated cardiomyopathy in American Cockers is linked to low levels of which amino acid?

Taurine ran low in every Cocker in a 1997 trial of the disease, and on taurine and carnitine supplements their hearts improved enough for them to come off cardiac drugs.

Lady, the screen's most famous Cocker Spaniel, first appears as a Christmas gift popping out of what?

A hatbox, tied with a bow: the scene replays a real Christmas when the film's producer surprised his wife with a puppy hidden the same way.

Which song plays as Lady and Tramp share their famous plate of spaghetti?

Bella Notte scores a scene now often ranked among cinema's great romantic sequences, though critics were lukewarm about the film when it opened.

Lady and the Tramp was its studio's first animated feature filmed in which widescreen process?

CinemaScope meant extra work planning scenes to fill a far wider screen; a 1953 short from the same studio had tried the process first, so this was the first feature, not the first cartoon.

In Lady and the Tramp, Lady's neighbours Jock and Trusty are what breeds?

A Scottie and a bloodhound, and the joke is on Trusty: he is a tracking hound who has lost his sense of smell.

What is the name of the restaurant where Tramp takes Lady for their famous spaghetti dinner?

Tony's: the proprietor serves the pair himself, helped by his cook Joe, and the moonlit spaghetti dinner became the film's best-known scene.

The 2019 live-action Lady and the Tramp remake premiered as a launch title for which streaming service?

Disney+ carried the remake from the service's launch day, November 12, 2019, and it never played in cinemas.

In Lady and the Tramp, Tramp wins over Lady's family by saving their baby from what?

A rat that climbs in through the nursery window: Tramp kills it, is blamed for the overturned crib and is hauled off by the dogcatcher until Lady shows the family the truth.

The 'cocker' in Cocker Spaniel comes from which bird the dogs were first bred to hunt?

Woodcock: the dogs specialised in hunting that bird, and the name outlived the job, since Cockers won their wide popularity as companions.

Until 1946, how were English-type Cockers classed at American dog shows?

As the same breed: fans of the English type formed their own club in the mid-1930s to stop the two being crossed, and the AKC made the split official in 1946.

In the 19th-century show ring, what alone decided whether a spaniel was classed as a Cocker or as another breed?

Its weight: a dog under the limit was shown as a Cocker and anything heavier as a Field Spaniel, so puppies from one litter could end up as two different breeds.

Before firearms, medieval hunters paired their spaniels with which trained hunting partner?

A falcon: the 15th-century Master of Game calls spaniels 'hounds for the hawk', and the partnership lasted until firearms reshaped bird hunting in the 17th century.

Around 1800 a British writer split land spaniels into two types, the cocking spaniel and which other?

The springing spaniel: Sydenham Edwards drew the line in his Cynographia Britannica, and both names survive today in the Cocker and the English Springer.

About how much does a fully grown American Cocker Spaniel weigh?

About 25 pounds: the breed's selling point is a dog big enough to keep up in the field yet compact enough to be portable.

Which coat pattern appears in American Cockers but falls outside the colours the AKC standard accepts?

Merle is missing from the standard, which disqualifies any colour it does not list, and the American Spaniel Club has studied the pattern's links to health problems.

Progressive retinal atrophy, an inherited eye disease in American Cockers, usually shows itself first as what?

Poor night vision comes first because the retina's rod cells, which handle dim light, die off before the cones, so a dog may balk at dark rooms while its daytime sight still seems fine.

How did the 2019 remake of Lady and the Tramp put Lady on screen?

With a real dog: a Cocker named Rose played Lady beside Monte, a shelter rescue cast as Tramp, with Tessa Thompson supplying her voice.

The 1952 Checkers speech was a fight to stay on the ticket as running mate to which presidential candidate?

Dwight D. Eisenhower won that November with the young senator still beside him, after viewers answered the broadcast's plea to wire and write the Republican National Committee.

From what kind of place did the senator broadcast the 1952 Checkers speech?

A Hollywood theatre: the El Capitan on Vine Street was a television studio at the time, and the building later became the Avalon nightclub.

Which singer voiced Darling and co-wrote the songs for the 1955 film Lady and the Tramp?

Peggy Lee also voiced the Siamese cats and the dog Peg, and decades later she sued the studio over video royalties and won.