We Have Hit Rock Bottom...(continued)
This momentum continued with a first peak in cocker spaniels registrations following the popular wins
of Ch. My Own Brucie. He won Best in Show at
Westminster in 1940. It was a great boost to the breed
popularity when the next year he went back and
repeated his sensational triumph; everybody wanted a dog just like him! Brucie was the best known
dog in America. When he passed away, the New
York Evening Sun published his obituary on its first
page, crowding out WWII news to make room for it.
“GENTLEMAN, I’VE
SAID IT BEFORE, AND
I
CAN’T BE
TOO EMPHATIC ABOUT IT-THE FIRST PERSON TO PUT
AN ELECTRIC CLIPPER ON A COCKER WILL BE THE MAN
TO START THE BREED’S DOWNFALL.
ARE COCKER
PEOPLE GOING TO BE BREEDERS OR BARBERS?
O.B GILMAN (IDAHURST KENNEL)
UP AND DOWN AND UP AGAIN
The Cocker downward spiral began around 1948.
“Breeder or barber” was a hot topic back then. The
blacks generally had longer hair coat and were winning. Ruth M. Kraeuchi wrote: “A few heavy-coated
individuals appeared, achieved great success in the
ring and were tremendously bred to. This type is
characterized by a taller, even more compact animal,
with an accentuated stop, higher dome, a shorter
deeper muzzle, more slope to the topline, a higher
tailset and, of course, greater quantities of feathering
– growing all over the leg and body and requiring
extensive trimming and shaping(…). In 1957 the
standard’s description of coat was changed from
”well-feathered” to “well-feathered, but not so
excessively as to hide the Cocker Spaniel’s true
line(…) in 1973 the standard was rewritten with particular emphasis on size, coat texture and mark-
ings(…) is the Cocker bred to fit the standard or is
the standard changed to fit the cocker?”
In 1959 Clark C. Thompson ASC Past Chairman
Executive Committee wrote:” (…) no breed long
remained at the peak for the reason that such over popularity attracts many types of breeders, vastly different
from those who build the breed up its position of prominence. The new types are primarily “in” the breed solely
for profit and have little if any interest in breeding as a
study. Naturally when such appear in growing numbers,
the breed starts to decline in overall quality and consequently drops off in popularity until those who were the
cause of this falling off quickly look around for another
breed that seems to be advancing in public favor.”
In 1955 Walt Disney released the animated feature
film Lady and the Tramp, and 10 years later dedicated breeders went on to improve the breed so that
after 1965, the breed popularity started up again.
The second peak was achieved gradually and by
1989-90 the Cocker was at the top of AKC registration with over 118,000 cockers.
A BREED IN DANGER?
Breeders that helped the breed in the early and
mid-sixties have retired and puppy-mills have
moved-on to other breeds. The drop in registration
is extreme (Figure 2).
In Great Britain, the Kennel Club recognizes a vulnerable breed as one which achieves 300 or fewer
registrations each year. The Clumber spaniel, the
Sussex spaniel, the Field spaniel and 25 other breeds
are on that list. AKC has not published any registrations data since 2009, so it is impossible to know the
accurate numbers of cockers registered. With the
Stud Book, it is possible to estimate registrations; the
good news is the decline is drastically slowing down
since 2013. The last known number was 9,481 cockANNUAL COCKER SPANIELS REGISTRATIONS
U.S.A. (1980-2015)
AMERICAN SPANIEL CLUB, INC. BULLETIN December 2015
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