Hello everybody.
I had my first cocker in 1967. He was golden, large and bad-tempered. He was castrated and lived for 15 years!
In 1969 I bought Jolly, a well-bred black show cocker who started a line of winning cockers that continues to this day.
Because I hated bits of my cockers being chopped off at three days, I have only bred about a dozen litters. In the 1980s I got into Irish Water Spaniels - the only spaniels not customarily docked. I shoot over my water spaniels and also have taken my cockers out shooting.
Today I have two water spaniels, and three cockers. Two of the cockers are ten year old sisters, whose mother Lizzie we lost last year at nearly fifteen years. (Lizzie was the most beautifully headed black cocker that I had ever bred.) Lizzie's daughters are like chalk and cheese. Fleur is a tiny golden who is a Peter Pan - she has never grown up. Her sister Jenni is a larger black bitch who takes herself much more seriously - and qualified for Crufts! Because of my doubts about docking neither Fleur nor Jenni had puppies.
Last year, after the docking ban, I bought Bertie, a little, golden, show bred cocker, whose breeding goes back to my old lines. He is now a seven month live wire. He has already been out shooting and retrieves partridge and woodcock to hand, but finds wounded cock pheasants a little too much at the moment! He is a live wire and the best thing about him is his ever-wagging, undocked, feathered tail. I love him to bits. He hits his first Championship show in February.
John
