Its name is derived from that of game birds which the English call Woodcock (woodcock) with which it competes of easy way and of which it always ends up triumphing.
No other dog renders the same services in the underwoods. No bush, no bramble constitute obstacles for him; even when they are inextricable, it knows how to make to force the game which took refuge there to leave there.
It unearths hare dissimulated in the most discrete anfractuosity and forces to fly away wild duck sheltered in the bulkiest reeds. Its small size enables him to work in the places inaccessible to the larger dogs.
It reports as well as it searches.
Because he likes hunting passionately and has a hypersensitive sense of smell, the Cocker spaniel obtains excellent results on the ground.
In the history of the Cocker spaniel, the modern era is relatively short bus one makes it start in 1879, year of the birth of the Obo dog which is regarded as the ancestor of all the current Cocker spaniels.
But the history of Spaniels in general and their role as gun dogs goes back to times much more distant.
It is admitted commonly that the oldest origins of the Cocker spaniel are attached to those of the Spaniels and Setters and that their ancestral forms were similar.
In his Prologue of the tale of the woman of the clothier of Bath (Wife of Bath' S Prologue), written between 1386 and 1390, the English Geoffrey Chaucer referred to Spaniels.
One describes the use of Spaniel for hunting for the falcon in one of oldest and of the most interesting works on the dogs, the book of hunting written between 1400 and 1410 per Gaston de Foix say Phœbus.
This work was translated into English by the first duke of York, fifth wire of Édouard Ill, under the title Master of game (Maitre de Jeu). One can read there in particular that Spaniel was drawn up to seek and raise game for the falcon and that it was to bring back it if the bird of prey only wounded it.
In 1570, Doctor Caius, of his true name John Keys, wrote in Latin a work entitled De Canibus Britannicis (Of the English dogs) in which it at that time carried out the first classification of all the dogs known in England. He mentioned there Spaniels which he divided into two categories: the “ground Spaniels” and the “water Spaniels”. Thereafter, ground Spaniel became Field spaniel.
In 1621, Gervase Markham establishes a precise distinction between Land' S spaniels (Spaniels of ground) and Water' S spaniels (water Spaniels).
In 1677, Nicholas Cox wrote: “I think that it is not necessary to ask whether Spaniel is useful to drive out with the falcon and which services he returns to those which practise this noble entertainment to spend time and for the pleasure which he gets.
It is known how it causes the take-off of game and brings back it when this one died… ”.
In a article published in 1803 in Sportsmen Cabinet, one mentioned two types of Spaniels: one much larger than the other bore the name of Springing spaniel (current Springer spaniel probably goes down from there); the second was called Cocking spaniel and agreed particularly for work in roofed-in area and hunting with the woodcock.
This text makes it possible to have already a rather precise idea of the Cocker spaniel which thus seems a dog different from other Spaniels.
For certain authors, the Cocker spaniel would be the downward one of Toy spaniel or Blenheim, of the breeding of the dukes of Marlborough.
About 1800, Blenheim was to be larger than its current descendants; it constituted to some extent the hyphen between Spaniel of work and that of company.
In Great Britain, until 1870, the breeding of Land' S spaniels preserved a very heterogeneous character because it was I' works landowners who selected the animals according to the only requirements of hunting that they practised.
Each one created a special type for its personal use in alarming more of qualities of hunters of the subjects that of their morphological homogeneity.
The organization of canine exposures made it possible to compare between them the various existing varieties and to fix the characteristics of well defined races of Spaniels.
One could then put order in a rather complicated situation and write the standards.
Inside each variety, one standardized the specific characters and one thus managed to distinguish exactly each race from Spaniels of hunting: the Cocker spaniel, Field, English Springer, Welsh Springer, Sussex, etc ..... (devecchi source)