American Cocker Spaniel Trivia
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45 free American Cocker Spaniel trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This American Cocker Spaniel trivia quiz is dedicated to the US breed, the smallest of the AKC's sporting dogs and for 18 years the most popular dog in America. Questions cover the Mayflower spaniel, Captain of 1878, the oldest breed club in the country, Obo II and his pregnant mother's crossing, the 1920s divergence from the English type, the UK's 1970 recognition and Aramingo Argonaught. The standard gets its due too: height limits, ASCOB and parti-colour classes, buff coats, feathering and the 'Merry Cocker' temperament. The famous dogs fill the rest: My Own Brucie's back-to-back Westminster wins and $15,000 offers, Carmor's Rise and Shine, the 2017 Crufts win, Nixon's Checkers speech and Tricia's puppy, Truman's unwanted Feller, Lady and the Tramp from Barbara Luddy to CinemaScope and Tony's spaghetti, and Dogday of Poppy Playtime. For the older British cousin and its Crufts record, see our separate English Cocker Spaniel quiz. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one, and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its citation.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What job was the Cocker Spaniel originally bred to do in the field?
Flushing birds from cover
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.
Q 02The American Cocker Spaniel holds what distinction within its AKC show group?
It is the smallest
It is the smallest, and Time in 1940 put its rise down to being as at home on city streets as in the field.
Q 03The first spaniel in America is said to have arrived aboard which ship in 1620?
The Mayflower
It was another 258 years before the AKC registered its first Cocker Spaniel.
Q 04Which part of a Cocker Spaniel do vets advise checking regularly because it becomes infected so easily?
Ears
Ears are the weak spot: the long, floppy flaps trap moisture in the canal, so yeast and bacteria thrive.
Q 05The American Spaniel Club, formed in 1881, holds what distinction?
Oldest US breed organisation for dogs
Oldest US breed organisation for dogs, it was founded in 1881, three years before the American Kennel Club that now registers its breed.
Q 06Paul Sperry copied the grooves in his Cocker Spaniel's paws to invent which non-slip footwear?
The boat shoe
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.
Q 07What sets the American Cocker apart from its English cousin?
Domed skull, shorter muzzle
Domed skull, shorter muzzle: American breeders bred for that head, and by the 1920s the two types had visibly drifted apart.
Q 08Under the American breed standard, how is a Cocker Spaniel's tail traditionally presented?
Docked short
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.
Q 09Which talk-show host honoured her late Cocker Spaniel, Sophie, on a 2008 show exposing puppy mills?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey had Sophie for 13 years; in 2009 she took her next Cocker puppy, Sadie, home from a Chicago no-kill shelter.
Q 10Which breed ended the Cocker Spaniel's second reign as America's most popular dog in 1991?
Labrador Retriever
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.
Q 11Which breed knocked the Cocker Spaniel off the top of the US popularity list in the early 1950s?
Beagle
Beagle registrations took the lead in 1953, though the spaniel won the top spot back in the 1980s.
Q 12At Westminster, which group must a Cocker Spaniel win to reach the Best in Show ring?
Sporting
Sporting: the breed is judged alongside setters and pointers because it was bred to work game birds for the gun.
Q 13Which American Cocker won Best in Show at Westminster in both 1940 and 1941?
Ch. My Own Brucie
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.
Q 21Which of these disqualifies a Cocker Spaniel under the AKC standard?
Excess height
Excess height: a male over 15½ inches or a female over 14½ is disqualified, while a dog that is too short is only penalised.
Q 22The AKC judges American Cockers in three colour classes: black, parti-colour and which one?
ASCOB
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.
Q 23The medium-long silky fur hanging from an American Cocker's legs and belly is called what?
Feathering
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.
Q 14The Cocker Afterglow Miami Ink won Best in Show at which event in 2017?
Crufts
Crufts, in Birmingham: the American breed won Britain's biggest dog show, though it had not won Westminster, on home soil, since 1954.
Q 15Where did the American Cocker Spaniel rank in AKC registrations in 2024?
32nd
32nd, a long way from the top spot it held through the 1940s and again in the 1980s.
Q 16Which senator's 1952 TV address became the Checkers speech, after his family's Cocker Spaniel?
Richard Nixon
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.
Q 17Who named the family's Cocker Spaniel Checkers?
Six-year-old Tricia
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.
Q 18The Checkers speech borrowed its dog anecdote from which earlier president's talk?
Roosevelt's Fala remarks
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.
Q 19In the Checkers speech, the senator said his wife wore a respectable Republican what?
Cloth coat
Cloth coat, not mink: the line cast the couple as ordinary people of modest means, not a family living off a secret fund.
Q 20Which president angered dog lovers by giving away Feller, a Cocker Spaniel puppy sent as a Christmas gift in 1947?
Harry S. Truman
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.
Q 24Tubby the Cocker Spaniel was the only victim of which bridge collapse?
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
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.
Q 25A study of North American vet hospitals found the American Cocker Spaniel had the highest rate of which eye disease?
Glaucoma
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.
Q 26Nutritional dilated cardiomyopathy in American Cockers is linked to low levels of which amino acid?
Taurine
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.
Q 27Lady, the screen's most famous Cocker Spaniel, first appears as a Christmas gift popping out of what?
A hatbox
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.
Q 28Which song plays as Lady and Tramp share their famous plate of spaghetti?
Bella Notte
Bella Notte scores a scene now often ranked among cinema's great romantic sequences, though critics were lukewarm about the film when it opened.
Q 29Lady and the Tramp was its studio's first animated feature filmed in which widescreen process?
CinemaScope
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.
Q 30In Lady and the Tramp, Lady's neighbours Jock and Trusty are what breeds?
A Scottie and a bloodhound
A Scottie and a bloodhound, and the joke is on Trusty: he is a tracking hound who has lost his sense of smell.