Show type x Working type

[Wyrd]

Are there many show x working type cockers about? Someone on another forum I use has 2 of these crosses and they seem to be the 'sort' my mum would possibly prefer (slightly shorter ears and shorter coat than a full show type, but still fairly chunky')

[Hurtwood Dogs]

There are quite a few about, but to be honest the 'look' of them is the last thing that should be determining her choice Working cockers can be extremely hard work (as can some show types but it's less likely) and they should have a pretty high hunt drive if they're true to type which can be difficult to manage, you won't know which traits a work x show pup will have until it's older...

What would your mum be looking to do with this dog, is it just an active companion/pet just to walk with or is she looking for a dog to do an energetic sport with such as flyball or agility? Or maybe get into gundog training? These are the questions which should be determining the type of cocker she's looking for rather than the look of the dog, as she could end up with something that never relaxes, takes a lot of work and training to manage and isn't at all ideal for her lifestyle...

Hope that doesn't sound harsh but a lot of people 'complain' about their working cockers being restless and never relaxing or that they constantly disappear of hunting because they bought them based on the look or 'more manageable' coats and that's a really bad idea.

[Wyrd]

I have researched into both 'types' of cocker and to be honest we would be happy with either (my preference is the working, mums is the show) when we get the dog we will most likely be living on a smallholding with miles of forestry/off road hacking (we just need the people who have an offer on our house to sell theirs), so if it needs lots of exercise it can be walked through the forestry, if not as much exercise then it can pootle around the land most of the day and go for short walks (I work from home and will be living in the same vicinity as my parents).
I have 7 horses and a Dalmatian that will be a carriage/road dog and accompany me on hacks, and we will try our hand at agility, so if my mother wants she can come to training with me. I would like to try my hand at gundog training (not to compete, just for fun), I have a Retriever x who I have had a go with gundog training and agility with but he is more of an obedience boy, I did enjoy doing some retrieving work with my grandfathers Labrador bitch but unfortunately she was PTS only a few months after he rehomed her at the start of the year. We also have a Border Collie so we are used to high energy dogs. 

[milly]

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to put links but if you put 'speckle of ardoon by keith erlandson' into google you'll find an article that details the story of Speckle who was a result of a cross between a show dog and a non working dam.
Speckle won three Championships in succession, the only spaniel of any breed to achieve this.

[Sarah1985]

I personally wouldnt buy a worker cross show. Dogs should be bred to be a fine example of their breed. Workers should be from good working lines and show dogs meeting the cosmetic requirements. By crossing workers and shows you arent going to get either a good show or good worker. You risk the dogs not being suitable for either the working or the pet market and it shows a lack of knowledge of the breed by the breeder IMO

I dont agree  with mindless breeding of dogs. I dont think its enough that they are KC registered. Maybe thats just me...

[Emma xx]

I personally wouldnt buy a worker cross show. Dogs should be bred to be a fine example of their breed. Workers should be from good working lines and show dogs meeting the cosmetic requirements. By crossing workers and shows you arent going to get either a good show or good worker. You risk the dogs not being suitable for either the working or the pet market and it shows a lack of knowledge of the breed by the breeder IMO

I dont agree  with mindless breeding of dogs. I dont think its enough that they are KC registered. Maybe thats just me...

I totally agree, im not sure that any decent breeder would have a real reason for crossing the two types anyway. It would be a bit pointless xx

[Karma]

I have a show/worker mix... and much as I love Honey, I agree with the previous posts.
Breeders who mix the 2 lines (except for a very small minority who may be doing so carefully for a specific reason) tend not to be the best breeders... they tend to be people who have just gone for an available dog, rather than finding the perfect mate... Honey probably has the worst of both worlds... she's VERY fluffy for a working cocker, but definately has the energy and intelligence of one... she is very quick to learn, but this hold equally true for bad habits, and we had to keep one step ahead of her at all times... we've learned a lot from her (and this site) but things could very easily have gone badly wrong...

It sounds like your lifestyle could suit a working cocker or a show cocker, so I would advice you research different lines - in working cocker lines you find some very different looks... some larger, some smaller, some shaped slightly different... as long as you are happy with the other aspects of a particular line, you may well find a working line that meets your Mum's ideas on looks while giving you an active dog you could do gundog training/agililty etc with.  

Just to add - when we got Honey, we had no idea we were getting a worker/show mix... we didn't even know about workers... so you're already on a better footing than we were!!  

[Sarah.H]

Millie's 1/2 and 1/2. She has a more show type head but a more athletic body than a show, she also seems tall compared to other bitches we meet. Her coat though is very very thick and would get unbelievable long if I let it , she needs a short short clip every six weeks or she gets too hot or too cold as it takes so long to dry. She's a second hand dog with a few issues so don't know what her would be like if I had her from a pup, she has a huge hunt and chase drive that I haven't been able to control so spends most of her walks on a flexi lead. But she's very smart and picks things quickly if I can keep her calm enough to teach  .

The immense coat she had the day I picked her up. She was so matted she had started to get sores on her ears  .



With a hair cut  .





I think there are too many variables to say that a cross will turn out the sort of dog you want  . You may be better talking to some breeders about the parent dogs temperament and then just getting the coat clipped to how you want it. BTW dad was show and mum was worker.

[JaspersMum]

My Blue roan - Louie is 1/4 worker: 3/4 Show but looks wise is very much his dad's son (all show). However in his genes, the worker really shows through and he's the one who needs to work the ground and needs to run (the others run after him but haven't a clue where or why they are doing it  )

I wouldn't swop him for the world.  However, just as the case of a cross bred mongrel, you wouldn't be sure whether a puppy is going to be more show than worker for looks and/or manner until later 

If its a shorter coat they are after but want security of "type" I guess they could have a show type and just resort to maintaining a shorter coat by clipping    I clip Louie to control his coat although he doesn't have the same fluff undercoat as Jasper, it still needs to be controlled.

this is Lou http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i180/jaspersmum/album3/IMG_8164.jpg

[Hurtwood Dogs]

I have researched into both 'types' of cocker and to be honest we would be happy with either (my preference is the working, mums is the show) when we get the dog we will most likely be living on a smallholding with miles of forestry/off road hacking (we just need the people who have an offer on our house to sell theirs), so if it needs lots of exercise it can be walked through the forestry, if not as much exercise then it can pootle around the land most of the day and go for short walks (I work from home and will be living in the same vicinity as my parents).
I have 7 horses and a Dalmatian that will be a carriage/road dog and accompany me on hacks, and we will try our hand at agility, so if my mother wants she can come to training with me. I would like to try my hand at gundog training (not to compete, just for fun), I have a Retriever x who I have had a go with gundog training and agility with but he is more of an obedience boy, I did enjoy doing some retrieving work with my grandfathers Labrador bitch but unfortunately she was PTS only a few months after he rehomed her at the start of the year. We also have a Border Collie so we are used to high energy dogs.  

Both show and working types can and do need a lot of exercise and prefer to be mentally stimulated. The show types that I've had would both be happy running all day although my current show type is a lot more easy going and doesn't crave exercise like my first show cocker did. You may find that the hunt and prey drive of a working cocker or a working cocker x is a lot more focused than the other dogs you've had to date and living on a small holding near forests will mean that you will really have to work on focusing that otherwise you'll be forever tearing your hair out trying to get a frantic hunting cocker back

I live in a very rural area between forests and farm land and my show cockers have been 'busy' but ok to manage living here however, my Weimaraner who is from strong working lines has been a lot harder as her hunt and prey drive is extremely strong. She was a rescue though and I didn't have her from a pup but to give you an idea, I lost her every walk for up to 40 mins for over a year when I first got her despite all manner of intensive and constant training including gundog work, agility, longline work etc. It took huge amounts of constant work every day and a lot of tears and frustration to get her hunt drive under control and refocused and I now have a lovely dog but if I didn't stay on top of her, she'd be gone in a second and her lightening fast prey drive still gives me the odd heart attack....................! It really is a big consideration taking on a dog that's from gundog working lines, particularly if you'll be living in an area with a lot of game

Good luck with whatever you decide

[Cockertime Blues]

Millie's 1/2 and 1/2. She has a more show type head but a more athletic body than a show, she also seems tall compared to other bitches we meet. Her coat though is very very thick and would get unbelievable long if I let it , she needs a short short clip every six weeks or she gets too hot or too cold as it takes so long to dry. She's a second hand dog with a few issues so don't know what her would be like if I had her from a pup, she has a huge hunt and chase drive that I haven't been able to control so spends most of her walks on a flexi lead. But she's very smart and picks things quickly if I can keep her calm enough to teach  .

The immense coat she had the day I picked her up. She was so matted she had started to get sores on her ears  .

Hard to believe Sarah, but you have just described our Mollie exactly - every single thing you said, including the matted ears and sores when we picked her up.  She's the black one in the pic (with apologies to Nicola as I think it may be her photo - quality is way too good to have been taken with my camera):



We think she's a cross, though we've no idea really.  Her ears are very short though - shorter than Alfie's worker ears and she has a very sturdy body.  She weighs a kilo more than Alfie.

Maybe the OP should resolve her dilemma by getting one of each.    .  Just joking - agree with other posters - get one or t'other and not a x.

[Penelope]

Buffy was a half and half and her coat was totally different from Harriet's.  She was really easy to groom etc and didn't need to be trimmed - whereas Harriet is a totally different type of dog, coat wise and personality wise.  Buffy was probably the most intelligent dog I have ever owned - she hardly needed training in the accepted sense of the word, she just picked everything up so quickly.  As she was our 3rd out of 3 at the time, she seemed to watch the others and learn from them.  She quickly picked up the wait command and never raced through a door ahead of us - she knew her basic commands really quickly and was just the most trainable, biddable dog I have ever had the priviledge to own.

After less than a week she understood so many commands it was incredible.  I never did it because we live by busy roads, but she was the kind of dog who never really needed a lead - she was just walking at heel from the first time we took her out.  She was just a brilliant, all round, fantastic dog!!!

I would just go with your gut instinct when you find the right pup/breeder and make sure they have the correct health checks etc.
Good luck.

[Top Barks]

Surely crossing shows and workers is just like croossing for all the new designer breeds such as labradoodles etc and surely spaniels have been crossed for years which is why we have achieved the dogs we had.
I'm not a breeder so not sure of all the health and welfare implications but surely if done right it can't be to bad can it? I suppose it depends on what you want from a litter,obviously they may never reach a breed standard (that wouldn't bother me a jot) and they may not make the best hunting dog but someones perfectly bright and happy companion? that is surely achievable.
I did say done right, and I'm sure that most responsible breeders would not cross a worker and a show, but all I'm saying is is it so wrong if relavent health screening is done?
I see both sides of the coin as my black boy Bayley I'm pretty sure is a show x worker is the brightest and keenest little lad going as some will know, but on the other side of the coin he has congenital cateracts.
I'll crawl back underneath my training stone and get my head down now!!!

[milly]

I wouldn't cross show and working cockers personally but the reason I posted about Speckle of Ardoon was because it makes me wonder how many 'working cockers' came from that line. The article says her offspring were a big influence on the breed.

[Nicola]

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to put links but if you put 'speckle of ardoon by keith erlandson' into google you'll find an article that details the story of Speckle who was a result of a cross between a show dog and a non working dam.
Speckle won three Championships in succession, the only spaniel of any breed to achieve this.

Speckle of Ardoon was undoubtedly an uncommonly good dog but she was bred in the late 1960s and won the championships in the early 1970s and things were very different back then both in terms of the dogs that were around and in the way that they were bred. Her dam was an Elan bitch so while she hadn't made the grade for working herself she came from some of the best quality stock of the day and the show dog that was her sire was from a strain that was still known for strong working drive. Even in her day she was very much an exception rather than a rule.

Dogs may have been crossed in the past to produce current breeds but the situation is rather different nowadays with all the recognised breeds (and strains of 'dual' breeds like Cockers and Springers) being pretty well established to breeding true to type. There's a world of difference in purposely setting out to create or improve a breed with a long-term plan in mind and just randomly mating any dogs for the sake of it or producing crossbreeds with made-up names to sell for silly money. Nowadays there really is no reason for working and show Cockers to be crossed and I don't know any good breeders of either type who would do this, it doesn't contribute anything to either strain as you're not producing good or true to type dogs of either strain so you're not improving on anything. There are too many dogs out there already to justify breeding more just for the sake of it, particuarly to produce pets which may have unknown traits and end up in homes that can't cope with them. I agree with what Sarah1985 said about it showing a lack of knowledge about the breed on the part of the breeder, either that or they don't particuarly care what they're producing, and neither of those are the sign of a responsible breeder.