8 - Breed Nutrition

The history of Cocker Spaniels…
Welsh Cocker (Illustrirtes Thierleben), A. E. Brehm
(1867)
Spaniels, dogs that have been used
on the hunt for centuries
It’s not at all easy to trace the precise genealogy of the Spaniels as
they have been used for hunting purposes since time immemorial.
One of the oldest texts on these dogs, Le livre de chasse (The Book
of Hunting), written in 1387 by Gaston Phoebus, the Count of Foix,
states that the Spaniel was trained to find and retrieve game when
hawking.
The word Spaniel is derived from the old French s’espaignir, meaning
“to lie down”, which is exactly what these dogs were trained
to do, so as not to disturb the hunters while they tried to throw their
net over the birds they coveted.
In 1570 John Caius wrote a book in Latin entitled De Canibus
Britannicis (Of English Dogs), in which he attempted for the first time
to classify all the dogs in England at that point. He made a distinction
for instance between water spaniels and land spaniels.
Etymology of the word Cocker
Ted Obo: M. James Farrow, Ipswich (L’Acclimatation)
The classification of the land spaniels was refined much later. An
1803 article in Sportsman’s Cabinet made a distinction between springing spaniels and cocking
spaniels, the latter of which were smaller and better suited to hunting the woodcock. At this time then,
the Cocker was already being distinguished from other spaniels. Some writers were convinced the
Cocker was descended from the Toy Spaniel or Blenheim, which came from the kennels of the dukes
of Marlborough. Around 1800 the Blenheim was much larger than its modern descendants. It was
a sort of link between working spaniels and companion spaniels. Another theory according spaniels
with Spanish roots continues to attract supporters, but it would appear less likely. Until the end of the
eighteenth century land spaniel breeding was very heterogeneous in Britain; everyone selected their
animals based on the particular demands of the hunt they practised. There would however be
attempts to rationalise the classification of dogs based on morphology and bearing.
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