We've two cockers. Milly's a female show strain, six years old and came to us from a rescue charity at 7 months old. Chaz is a four year old male worker and we got him as a puppy from a breeder/gamekeeper on a local estate.
When Chaz first came home I sat on the floor in the kitchen with him on my lap for Milly to come up and introduce herself. Milly's always been very gentle and ladylike so it came as a bit of a surprise when, a few minutes later, they were both tearing around the house tails going like mad taking it in turns to chase each other
While we'd had to be careful with Milly due to her rather unfortunate history prior to coming to us, Chaz's arrival seemed to make her world complete. She became more confident and, although there were the odd growls from her during Chaz's learning process, there's no real nastiness between them and Chaz still defers to her most of the time
They're walked together with Dot taking Milly's lead while I have Chaz and when they're released Milly's quite happy to stay fairly close by investigating any interesting scents while Chaz is off dashing around at a rate of knots before eventually settling down to quartering the particular bit of ground that he's occupying at the time.
At home, Milly settles down close to Dot and snoozes while Chaz seems at times to be attached to me with a piece of string whenever I'm on the move and settles around my feet or alongside my chair whenever I'm sat down.
In many ways they're like chalk and cheese but they do seem to rub along together pretty well together most of the time.
Overall our experience with the two of them is very positive but I have to admit that Chaz's puppyhood was somewhat "Challenging" but almost certainly not as bad as it would have been without Milly's influence.
Yes, costs of insurance, vet's bills and food are doubled but so are the rewards of having a cocker each
Bob.