I do competitive obedience with my spaniels. I have been doing it for a few years, for the last 4 years with my American cocker who is in Beginners (and needs to win out of it desperately... he can do it, but the previous year had a car phobia so stopped working in the ring, and last year for some unknown reason started to break stays and gave a couple of wins away that way...
).
My English cocker is 17 months old and can do her exercises very well, however, is still an air head in other aspects and this year I am mainly working on just keeping her attention and having complete fun in the ring, so am not competing with her yet; hopefully next year, but I'm not in a rush.
There are more and more spaniels in obedience, so I say give it a go.
It is definitely different working a small dog, I find I have the tendency much more to lean over them. Also, they can get themselves out of position during heelwork for example trying to look up at my face... though a lot of that is also my crooked movements partly also due to them being small
Jesse (my American cocker) is dead easy to train and has 100% attention on me at all times in the ring, so he really is no problem in respect of that. He will do everything a thousand times over if asked (and a treat is on the go), he is cool with anything we do. (Here is a little taster of him practicing in my sitting room:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHhV2MIFIUg ).
Skye is trickier with keeping attention as her spaniel nose kicks in very easily...
Jesse won out of Pre-Beginners at 18 months old, but Skye isn't ready yet for the ring as I just know she will take off after a smell if the fancy takes her. So this year, I will just do lots of playing with her, lots of attention work around shows (she comes to shows with me and Jesse) and towards the autumn enter her in some classes to do training rounds. She will come good, but she needs much more fun being put into the training than Jesse does for example as other things (spaniel things like smells) can become more interesting very quickly otherwise.
Good luck. Whereabouts are you? If you are in the south east, then perhaps we'll meet some time.
