Suwannee Cockers
The Place for Merles and Sables
BEAU'S PUPS
We think that this is a good place to discuss our Beau's physical characteristics, before we get to his puppy pictures, as Beau is a bit different from our other dogs. So if you just want to see his puppy pictures, then please skip down to where the puppy pictures begin, quite a few paragraphs down. However, there are dozens of pictures on this page, so it might take a while to load on dial-up, but we feel that the pictures of all of these darling Cocker pups is worth the wait!
We acquired our red and white Beau to bring new genes into our lines, so that we could keep some of our Sable and Merle girls to breed here, as we do not line or inbreed. And we wanted a "deep red" dog to deepen our mahogany red Sable coloring, as the red type of buff dogs, bred to Sable dogs, does produce the deepest colors of red Sable. Our Max produces some very light Sables, including "blue Sables," and breeding Sable to Sable is doubling the Sable dilution gene and will thus eventually produce very light shades of Sable.
But at the time that we acquired Beau we did not realize that his buff gene would also hide so many of our Sable and Merle puppies, as the girls that we were breeding to him were all carrying buff, and the majority of the puppies that he threw with them turned out to be buffs.
Beau came here as an eight week old puppy, and we have been delighted with him ever since, despite his color genetics sometimes hiding our Merle and Sable pups. Beau has a wonderful Cocker temperament that he imparts to his puppies, and he is just a delightful dog to have in our home. However, Beau is also a heterozygous "dominant black" on the K Locus, which also does sometimes hide our Sables, tris, and even Merle pups, by epistasis, so it has been a learning experience for us, trying to work around his color genetics. But eventually we do hope to have some Merle girls here that do not carry the recessive buff gene to breed to Beau, so that we can get the Merle and Sable markings that we so desire from him, as we are not about to give up breeding a dog with such a wonderful temperament just due to color!
Our Beau is a very "old-fashioned" looking Cocker, with a very traditional "sport coat," which all Cocker Spaniels had before they became show dogs, after which they were then bred for the heavier coats. But the sport coat still persists in Cockers, and sport coats show up now and then in Cocker litters, when the dogs being bred are not homozygous for huge show coats. Also red Cockers are known for having the thinnest coats of all of the Cocker colors, and the buffs in general are known for their skimpy coats.
But the sport type of Cocker coats is by far the easiest to manage on a pet dog, especially in our hot and steamy Florida climate, and people who get one of Beau's puppies with a sport coat find that they love the easy care of such a coat as compared to some of our heavier coated puppies. And we have been told by owners who have both types of coat that they have to take their sport coated Cockers to their groomer's about half as much as their heavier coated Cockers. We can generally tell by around six weeks old if a pup is going to have the sport coat or not, and such a pup, when grown, will generally have less hair on the feet and on the front of the legs, but will have feathering on the back of the legs. But the hair on the ears will still be very long, and the tail feathering will still be full, and sometimes rather "frilly."
Perhaps the most famous example of a Cocker sport coat would be the dog shown above, who is Champion My Own Brucie, who was Best in Show at Westminster in both 1940 and 1941, and this dog's name can still be found listed in many American Cocker pedigrees. What a dog! We have recently found him in our Max's pedigree, and in time we will probably find him in Beau's pedigree too.
The writer's Mother owned a black stud Cocker in the early 1950's who was a direct descendant of My Own Brucie, and this type of coat was the typical coat for a Cocker of that time. Our family's dog was named Curly, and he is shown here, at an older age, up on the hood of a car, being petted by the writer, who was a teenager at the time, about 1955 or 1956. But times change, and obviously the modern show Cocker coat has been developed far beyond this modest and easy to care for coat, as apparently fanciers did not consider the sport coat "showy" enough.
Also notice about My Own Brucie his longer back in comparison to his height, his flatter head, his longer muzzle, his lack of exaggerated rear angulation, and the virtual lack of a stop between his eyes. My Own Brucie was an example of a true "field" type of dog which was developed for a purpose--hunting birds--and American Cockers are shown in the Sporting Group at AKC shows. But the easy going pack mentality of the Cocker, combined with their stunning good looks, turned them into the ultimate pet dog of suburban mid-Century America.
But along with that growing popularity, the dog fancy exaggerated so many characteristics of the original Cocker type, mainly through inbreeding and linebreeding, that to the trained eye the modern show Cocker is virtually unrecognizable as the same breed as My Own Brucie. Well, both types do have very long ears, and many modern show dogs are undoubtably very beautiful. But the amount of inbreeding and line breeding that it took to get from Champion My Own Brucie's type of field dog to the typical Cocker show dog of today means that we do not care to have total show lines in our dogs.
We do think that many of the Cocker show dogs are very beautiful, especially if they have the more refined head that we prefer, with the longer muzzle. But we do endeavor to have as wide a gene pool as possible behind our dogs, through "positive assortive breeding," so as to minimize any accumulation of unhealthy genes in our lines, which accumulation is called "genetic load." But assortive breeding, as opposed to inbreeding or linebreeding, means that we get a wider variety in every characteristic of our dogs, including color, size and physical type. But nothing could be more exciting to us than the birth of a beautiful Merle pup such as Beau's tri Merle little girl named Zhoe, pictured below at 17 days old, so with this added variety in type we also get some of the most beautiful colors and markings found in Cockers. And as Merles are totally banned from the AKC Cocker show ring, and they are not even allowed to be registered as to their correct Merle markings, we are assured of a wider gene pool in our dogs than if we were just breeding regular colors with total show lines.
If one is willing to spend enough money buying both champion sired pups and champion dogs themselves, then one can breed total show lines without showing. But we do not see that as an ideal to follow, and one of the reasons that we chose to concentrate on the Sables and the Merles is precisely because they are both barred from the AKC show ring, so these markings are quite outbred compared to most show Cockers. But we may eventually pay a price for this, as in the Winter of 2007 we are hearing rumblings on dog e-mail lists about a coming "purge" of Merle Cockers, as the American Spaniel Club--usually just called the ASC--is supposedly pressuring the AKC to remove Merle Cockers from AKC registration. And there is another rumor about perhaps the creation of a "Z" list for Merle Cockers, as is maintained for white Dobermans. But only time will tell what will happen with the Merle Cocker controversy, and if we have to leave the AKC over this issue, then we will, rather than give up breeding our Merles. After all, there are many other dog registries, and perhaps we are just in the habit of registering our dogs with the AKC and should reconsider doing so.
But our family has had AKC dogs since 1946, when the American Spaniel Club was first accepted into the AKC, and the writer's Mother began with Cockers in the early 1930's, so the AKC would be a difficult tradition for us to give up. And with four different breeds over the years, we have probably spent many thousands of dollars with the AKC. The dog to the left is Penny, who was the writer's Mother's premier AKC Cocker breeding girl, and a family pet for over 14 years in the 1940's and early 1950's. And our understanding has been that the AKC has not refused registration of any purebred dog due to color and/or markings, and there are many color anomalies in many different breeds, such as "lavender" Labs. But the American Spaniel Club has always been a hot bed of color disputes, and we have even heard recently that there is a movement within the Cocker breed club--the ASC--to get rid of the Roans in the AKC Cocker ring. If this is true, then we are astounded, as Roan is the original Spaniel marking! But we have not been happy at all with the AKC's stand on PAWS, which is proposed legislation that would federalize all dog breeding, making breeders abandon homebreeding, and breed puppies under laboratory rat conditions, especially as this proposed legislation would totally prevent our housetraining our dogs! So we can only await future developments, and we will be sure to keep our readers informed.
We do try to keep a happy medium with our dogs, and our dogs are a mixture of show lines, home bred or "back yard breeder" lines, and some commercial lines, giving us a VERY wide gene pool within the Cocker breed, which we feel is the ultimate gene pool to have for health. We breed for temperament first and then health--as all dogs will eventually get old and sick, and we feel temperament is more important for enjoying the dog--and in a resounding third place comes type. We certainly do not ignore type, but it is not our first priority in our breeding, as we have absolutely no interest in the show ring. And if a puppy buyer has a preference for certain physical type and coat qualities, as well as size and color, then we will work with them to place puppies that we might have with their desired characteristics. As said elsewhere on this website, we are all about providing pet dogs for loving homes, and we feel that people have a right to their preferances in their pets, whether it be size or color or whatever, as long as the dog has a temperament that makes it a good pet Cocker.
And even within show Cockers there are often different looks in different lines of dogs, and in Cockers we have noticed a definite difference in head types between West Coast dogs and East Coast dogs, with the West Coast dogs often having larger and more massive heads and even heavier bodies, especially in pet Cockers. We like to call these Cockers "mini-St. Bernards." But we are not criticizing this look, as many people like it and think that this look is the quintessential Cocker look. And this regional difference is perhaps due to a really famous and influential Connecticut kennel which favored very small heads on their Cockers for many years, thus influencing East Coast Cockers. We just feel that there is lots of room in pet Cockers for both regional and personal preferences in the type of Cocker that one desires, and we do not feel that Cockers are in any danger of eventually looking like "mutts," if many breeders prefer other types of Cockers than what is currently winning in the show ring.
But back to Beau: what coat Beau does have has a very nice texture, with quite a bit of body to each hair, except for the fringe on his ears and near his tail, which is silkier. And his coat is straight, with only some curl in his "tail feathering." Beau is also very "open," meaning that he has a lot of white areas on his body, but he throws all sorts of markings, determined also by the girl that he is bred with. Beau's sire was ticked so heavily as to almost be a Roan, but Beau's coat is generally "clear," with just a sprinkling of ticking here and there, so Beau is probably heterozygous for both ticking and clear markings. Beau's dam, shown below, is named Athena, and she is a solid silver buff, and probably chocolate based. But Beau's sire is a very open, heavily ticked, black based, red and white dog who is rather small, and with more modern head type than either Athena or Beau.
Red Cockers are also known for having the most white spotting of all of the Cocker colors for some still unknown genetic reason, and it is almost impossible to get a solid red Cocker anymore. So most dark red Cockers--which are usually recessive reds on the E Locus, as opposed to dominant reds on the A Locus, which are called Sables--do have some white spotting. And red and white parti Cockers are usually the most "open" of all of the Cocker colors, meaning that they have a lot of white, as opposed to "closed" markings, which means that the dog has a lot of color, with very little white spotting.
The ideal parti Cocker is half color and half white, but the more open dogs, with lots of white, have become more popular in recent years, even in the show ring. But we have heard that there is a movement in the parent breed club--the ASC--to ban the "half-faces," which would be rather ironic, as one of the most famous and most beautiful show Cockers, who is on the cover of the largest American Cocker book ever produced--Champion Ging's Alydar--is an absolutely stunning looking half face. Alydar is five generations behind our Beau, so Beau does have some show lines behind him, including several show Sable lines, before the Sables were banned from the AKC Cocker show ring in 1997. But may we suggest a comparison of Ch. My Own Brucie and Ch. Ging's Alydar? A picture is indeed worth a thousand words, and we can think of no two better pictures to illustate the evolution of American Cockers in the AKC show ring. And if you are at all interested in the history of showing Cockers, and/or looking at many hundreds of pictures of Cockers, this book is available from Amazon.com
Our Beau is a very elegant looking Cocker, and he has a wonderful stance, is very fast, and he is very graceful in his movement. He is a medium sized Cocker, weighing about 25 pounds, and he is a bit long bodied, as opposed to the current fashion for very short bodied Cockers, which we think is unhealthy, especially in a breeding girl. Beau also has the more traditional longer muzzle and a bit flatter head than modern show Cockers, but his head is within the porportions of the Cocker standard. And he has an excellent bite, with large, strong teeth. He does have the more extreme rear angulation desired in modern Cockers, and he is beautiful to watch when he is running, and very elegant looking when he is still. We especially love the way that he carries his head.
So far we have bred Beau to three of our girls--two of our now retired solid Merle girls, and Aidan, our "Blue Sable" and white girl--and he has sired several litters with other Cocker breeders---and we have been very pleased with his puppies, as have the people who have bought them from us. But he has only produced one Merle for us, due to every girl that we have bred to him carrying buff and/or dominant black.
Beau has thrown a variety of sizes, from a 15 pound solid Sable girl to an almost 30 pound buff and white boy, so he has a very healthy and wide gene pool behind him. But predicting the eventual size of a puppy is much more difficult than predicting coat length. Beau is also out of the last litter from a then five year old dam and a six year old sire, neither of whom have ever had any health probems, nor have they ever thrown any pups with health problems.
To the right is a picture of Beau with a rather severe Cocker clip, but we will never clip him this closely again, as he has a much lighter undercoat than we originally thought, and we prefer his darker color. We were just trying to make him cooler in the Summer heat when we clipped him this way. But seeing his lighter undercoat, we now wonder if Beau is actually a "clear Sable" which is an A Locus dominant red, rather than a true E Locus recessive red, which is the "technical" name for what is called "buffs" in Cockers. But as Beau is at least carrying buff from his dam, proving this one way or the other will be difficult until we have a non-buff carrying girl to breed to him.
And now on to Beau's puppies!
Tallulah is a solid mahogany red Sable girl with a black mask and some white markings, from Beau's first litter out of our now retired solid Sable-Merle girl named Zelda. Beau has some famous AKC champion Sable dogs in his pedigree, and we were very pleased to see this Sable girl in his first litter. Tallulah lives with her family in Homestead, Florida, and is shown here at a year old.
This cute black and white girl named Betty is also from Beau's first litter, out of a Sable-Merle girl named Zelda, and she is shown at eight weeks old. This pup's markings shows that Beau is a dominant black on the K Locus, as otherwise she would be a black tri. However, as there was also a Sable in this litter, this proves that Beau is a heterozygous Dominant Black, called "K k" on the K Locus. Often we breeders have to work out colors and markings backwards from the pups that a dog produces. Betty now lives with her family in Naples, Florida.
This black and white girl had very unusual markings, as she had black "stepping stone" markings down her back, but both of her sides are solid white.
This very handsome solid buff boy named Buddy, from Beau and Zelda, lives with his family in Chiefland, Florida.
Sadie is a chocolate parti Sable girl from Beau and Zelda, and she lives with her family in Lake Mary, Florida. We were very surprised to get a chocolate puppy from Beau, as there are no chocolates in his pedigree for quite a few generations. Chocolate is recessive, so it must be thrown by both parents to show up in a puppy.
Sadie's family includes a red and white Cocker named Sammie. Cocker owners in Florida often keep their Cockers completely clipped, due to our long, hot and humid Summers. This picture shows that Sadie is very open, with a lot of white in her coat, just like Beau. And we love the matching white tips on both Sadie and Sammie's tails.
We recently received this cute picture of Sadie taken at Christmas 2006.
Buffy is a buff and white girl with one blue eye and one brown eye, and she lives with her family in Fanning Springs, Florida. She is shown here at about three months old. Buffy is most probably a "hidden Merle," and we love her "Egyptian Eyes," as the dark rims around her eyes are called.
Buffy has very pretty markings, with her ears being a much darker buff than the rest of the colored areas on her body, and Buffy may be a clear Sable-Merle dog.
Zhoe is a Blue Merle tri girl out of our now retired solid Merle girl named Zadda, and she is the only Merle dog that Beau has ever thrown. Zhoe has the same beautiful silvery Merle markings as her dam, only Zhoe is a tri and not a solid like her dam.
Zhoe has a wonderful body, and a great stance, and is shown here at about ten weeks old. By this age it had become obvious that Zhoe had probably inherited a "sport coat" from Beau, as Zadda has a rather heavy and silky coat. We have not figured out the inheritance of dog coats yet.
Zhoe lives with her family in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, which includes her Uncle Foster and her Aunt Zelda.
This striking looking buff parti boy, also named Buddy, is mostly white, and he lives with his family in Keystone Heights, Florida. He is out of Beau and our now retired solid Merle girl named Zadda, and we think that this boy might be a hidden Merle. He is shown at about eleven weeks old.
Buddy is mostly white and very striking looking.
This buff and white boy named Archie was almost white when he was born, but by the time that he was eight weeks old he was starting to show some of his buff coloring.
But by the time that Archie was approaching a year old his buff coloring had darkened considerably. Archie has the "sport coat," and is the largest puppy that we have ever produced, at almost 30 pounds, which is very surprising, considering that his dam, our retired solid Merle girl named Zadda, weighs only 18 pounds. Again, a wide gene pool produces a wider variety of puppy sizes, and his owners tell us that Archie's size makes him a very effective watch dog.
This picture shows that Archie's coloring sometimes looks lighter than at other times, and both his owners and we are rather puzzled because he seems to shift colors occasionally, from a deeper red tone to a lighter tan color--and then back again to red! We have heard that some Cocker colors are temperature sensitive, so perhaps this is the reason for Archie's color shifts.
The above red and white pup named Dolly was our pick of the litter from a litter of five girls from Beau and a solid red girl named Sassy. Sassy is a full sister to our now retired girl named Sparkle, so we know this pedigree extremely well. Dolly is shown at four weeks old.
Dolly is shown here at five months old, and she is one of the most deeply red Cockers that we have ever seen, but her coat is mostly white. She has a beautiful coat, with each straight hair having quite a bit of body, but with curly feathering on her rear. She looks a bit serious here, but she is very sweet and playful. So far she is turning out to be smaller than we though that she would be, but her dam is rather small, and Beau's sire is also rather small, so these two small lines must have met up in this girl.
This almost all white girl, shown at about seven weeks old, with just a few red spots, now lives with her family in High Springs, Florida, and obviously this girl's solid red dam was carrying a very open spotting gene, which combined with Beau's very open markings produced an almost all white puppy. This puppy is NOT a Merle, and she has no Merle genes behind her, and we were very surprised to see this mostly white girl come from a solid red dam. But this girl reminds us a lot of Beau's red and white sire, who is mostly white but has enough ticking to almost be called a Roan. This pup looks like Beau's sire in her head type also.
This buff and white girl is named Lily and she lives with her family in Orlando, Florida.
Sangria--call name "Ria"--and Brandy are shown here at five months old. They are from the same litter and live with their owners in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Ria has strikingly beautiful markings, and we are told that she is a very sweet Cocker girl too. She is shown above at about five months old.
Brandy was the only solid girl in a litter of five girls. She is shown here at about five months old, and she obviously has a very good groomer! Solid is suppose to be dominant over parti, but Beau has been bred to three solid girls so far, but has only thrown three solid pups in those three litters.
Vallina is a red mahogany Sable and white girl from Beau and our Blue Sable and white girl named Aidan. Vallina lives here with us while we are evaulating her for future breeding.
Vallina has beautiful coloring and markings, including "Egyptian eyes" and part of a black mask. So far she has a "sport coat."
Vallina's red Sable coloring is a very deep red that gleams in the sun.
VeVe is a littermate to Vallina, out of Aidan and Beau, and she is mostly white, with a lot of black on her head, and a bit on her tail. She is shown here at about eight weeks old.
VeVe definitely does NOT have a sport coat, as like most black Cockers she has a rather heavy coat. She is shown here at about seven months old, and we are currently evaulating VeVe for future breeding. She is a dominant black on the K Locus, and is also carrying buff--probably deep red--and possibly chocolate, and Sable or tan points--and of course all of that white.
Guss Guss is a very handsome black and white boy from Aidan and Beau who lives with his family in Ft. Myers, Florida. We love this "glamour shot" of him.
Guss Guss is just adorable.
Riley is a mostly white boy, with red markings on his head, from Aidan and Beau, and he lives with his family near Orlando, Florida. He is shown here at eight weeks old.
Riley has very similar markings to Beau.
Bear is a buff and white boy from Aidan and Beau who lives with his family in Clearwater, Florida. He is shown at about eight weeks old.
Bear's first night at home.
Beau is not a very large dog, but he is a powerful runner, and he is almost all muscle, as is shown in the above picture, taken out in our largest dog play yard with our girl named Aidan. He has an excellent front and rear, and a naturally sloping topline, and he is continually presenting us with great "natural stacks," one of which we hope to someday capture with our rather slow, digital "point and shoot" camera! The above picture shows Beau's coat about eight months grown out from a complete shaving that we did at the beginning of the Summer of 2006, which was a particularly hot and buggy season here. But in 2007 we will try to keep our dogs with a clipped back and a low skirt, and leave some trimmings on their rears and ears, and then see how that works out in our intense Summer heat.
Beau is one of the sweetest natured Cockers that we have ever met, and he has helped us raise several puppies here, including several of his own. In the above picture he is licking the head of a small Blue Merle tri girl, and he is very protective of smaller dogs.
Beau is partly a throwback to the type of Cockers that we were raised with, and we can picture him actually being used as a hunting dog. But we are still trying to figure out how to keep him clipped in a way that is sensible for our hot climate, but is still attractive on him. But however he is clipped, we think that our Beau is very handsome, and we hope that you have enjoyed this tour of his puppies. The link to Beau's pedigree page can be found at the bottom of his page.
Designed and Maintained by
BIG OAKS DESIGN
BigOaksDesign@Gmail.com
Copyright Suwannee Cockers 2004-2007
