Retrievers: the new Cockerpoo/Cocker Spaniel?

[Killingoffmyflowersonebyone]

I’ve recently noticed a really high increase in the number of aggressive and badly trained retrievers or those with lots of behavioural issues. A few years ago (pre covid and immediately post-Covid) it seemed to be cockerpoos and cocker spaniels.

I foster and in the last year I’ve had two retriever breeds with serious issues - before this, only had one over a six year period, but lots of cockerpoos. I do a lot (3-4) of holidays in the UK and go somewhere new every time. So even though I originally thought ‘oh it’s just tossers getting dogs they’re ill equipped to own where I live,’ it’s apparently not. I’m just wondering if anyone else has noticed it? And if so, what you think the issue is?

Personally, I think they’re ’family friendly’ breeds being bought by the wrong people who don’t adequately exercise, train or socialise their dogs. So is it that?
Poor breeding because of increased breeders for these breeds because of the surge in popularity? Both?

Around me, people have mostly moved on from cockers/poos - I think given the increase in known issues - I see far more young retrievers these days than I do cockerpoos. But I’m really interested to know others views on this are?

Obviously there are other breeds with serious aggression issues or likely behavioural issues but I’ve just never met as many aggressive or problemed retrievers as I have recently…

More than happy to be told it’s just me and I have bad luck (I do walk a lot so there’s a high chance it’s that) but it just feels like it’s gone past the point of bad luck!

Thanks @brushingboots - he's definitely not a spaniel, though interestingly they're one of his favourite breeds, lol.

I always roll my eyes when a well-meaning labrador or spaniel owner tries to tell me how to recall him though!

I'm with @brushingboots - I was so paranoid that I'd taken on more than I could manage that I read everything, to the point of having too much to digest at times. But it did mean that by the time I went to my six-week-class-in-a-church-hall, I knew what I wanted from that trainer, knew she was the right one, and Bill had already mastered some of the key elements.

It also showed up the extent to which he was less focused on me than other puppies were, and too focused on other dogs, and showed me I needed to change the way I approached that, as well as teaching us cues and skills I didn't have before. I've worked consistently on his focus around other dogs, and he can now be relatively neutral, and wait for a strange dog to pass, but also has really good social and play skills for his age - so we now have a good balance but I wouldn't have seen the problem without the class.

So it was absolutely worth it, and I'll be taking him to the next stage of classes too, but as @brushingboots says, an awful lot of what he needed I googled or got from books (or the DTAS guides) (I'm now going to look up the Horse and Hound forums!).

I think the problem is that people don't always understand the gap between what they think they know about dogs and what they actually need to know for their particular dogs, and perhaps that's more the case for people who've had dogs before and assume that they have the skills - whereas I knew I didn't have a clue! I have an old friend who grew up around dogs and had a JRT for nearly 20 years, and has looked after other people's dogs forever. She got her first gundog cross this year. She had real problems adjusting her expectations around (for example) how much company and attention the puppy would need compared to her previous dogs - and it's a designer companion mix, not a working lines lunatic.

Yes I agree about recall whistle and when you start using it, I do exacly the same and advise puppy owners or people I help to use it in similar situations.

Yes you are right to say look at the breeders, but not all gundog breeds are bred by breeders who work them as gundogs. So for a large section of gundog puppies, the first training they get is with their owners, great if they research and use resources available, or we are back to the village hall 8 week training course, where unless it is highly different to the majority whistles are not used.

I teach my own dogs with whistle, voice and hand signals - all can be used for recall for the situation when I have dropped my whistle. Ok I admit I always have spare whistles in various pockets but you get the idea.

I expect there are many owners who once a dog does come back when they have been calling and calling, or constant whistling tell it off.

To make a good dog there are many factors, you obviously know this, but many do not. Education is the answer for all, not the ban dogs off lead brigade.

As an incidental question, can I ask when breeds started getting split into show and working dogs?
I've never had to question this as I believe that Weimaraner's are not separated in this way.

Growing up, many many years ago, a spaniel was a spaniel etc.

So when and how did we end up with subsets??

It has been happening gradually with some breeds - there are not as many as envisaged which is good. For me it is for working ability predominantly - bloodhounds hunting a clean boot do not look like the heavier boned ones in the ring. Hunting beagles in packs are lighter weighted and longer legged than the show beagles. Working cockers have shorter ears and normally less coat than cockers in the ring. Labradors, most people have seen, far heavier in the ring that those in the field.

Interestingly breeds such as the harrier have not long come onto the breed register and most that are shown are from harrier packs which is good to see.

Not pointing a finger but it should also be said breeds shown in America are very much more "flashy" and if the dogs are imported to the UK it does influence how breeds develop here.

The HPR breeds here tend to always remain a single type, the breed clubs and breeders work very hard to ensure that is how it should be.

For the gundogs here there are some dual champions but not many, there are more full champions having gained a working qualification in order to drop the show bit of their champion status. In some European countries the gundogs must have a working qualification for some titles to be obtained.

I am not sure it has answered your question though!

It has given me more insight so thank you

Maybe naivity on my part, but I believe the majority of dog owners do not go out and want their dogs to bugger off. I think @schloss is spot on with this comment. Often (and I vividly remember being a first time dog-owner) it's a mix of optimism, incompetence and low expectations. Some owners think it's fine if they call three times and after a minute Fido comes pootling back out of the undergrowth where he was never more than20 feet away. I now expect my dogs to pretty much turn on a sixpence and race in (one is inclined to just have a quick extra sniff....).

Using whistle, voice and hands is also a really useful thing to do. I forgot my whistle on my lunchtime dog walk, and had to rely on my voice, and realised that one of my dogs sees 'Come!' as a suggestion, not an instruction: she comes, but at half the speed she would for the whistle. So we need to work on that.

It is funny you mention Horse and Hound, their forums have some great advice. I mentioned it to someone who had just purchased an ESS - their response, I I do not agree with any form of hunting or country sports so will not look. Oh the irony having just purchased a dog which was bred for use in a shooting field! Oh good grief! Irony indeed!

@brushingboots have you discovered the Ladies' Working Dog Group? Loads of advice, and a very nice vibe on the FB threads. And plenty of gundog trainers will train pets. But anyone with an HPR is probably better off finding a gundog trainer who has actually owned one.

@drivinmecrazy
The whole show/work split is a quite a bugbear of mine, as the showing always seems to accentuate elements of a breed's a appearance. If the standard calls for 'solid bone' within 30 years the dogs are built like elephants; if it's 'pendulous ears' they end up dragging on the ground. In the breed we have a lot of effort is put in by owners of working dogs to show them. I was really pleased to see that for the first time in over 30 years a GSP has just been made up to dual champion (apparently he was case of too much hunting talent having to be slowly channelled). I think I'm right in saying that in Germany a GSP litter can only be registered with the breed club if the parents have passed both a hunting and a conformation test. That should be the expectation of gundog breeds in the UK but sadly it's not.

I have nothing at all against breeds being developed for the pet market: a lot of people want a happy, confident, low-drive, biddable dog with decent health (some big, some small, some insanely furry, some not) but they end up with a dog that is much more than they anticipated. I just object to the name being swiped (as Jack Russell now has been) by people whose interest is in how the dog looks, not what the dog was developed to do.

@EdithStourton Yes the over exaggeration of some aspects of conformation is not good. Some breed standards are very explicit on how the conformation should be, others less so are open to far more interpretation.

I do think the show ring and conformation, therefore how the dog looks, is important. The show ring tends to see the higher winning dogs as the stock producers of the future so they should be as near correct as possible. If they are correct in their conformation, they should move well and therefore they should be used, subject to disposition and health tests, in the breeding of future generations. In the same area, the conformation and movement detailed in the breed standards comes from the job the dogs were bred to do. So for some gundog breeds there is normally a call for big squidgey noses (said slightly more official in the standards!) which allow them to work scent. Front and rear angulation allows them to work all day in he field. A gundog with upright shoulders is going to tire very quickly.

So the looks should be directly correlated to its job, you can judge the working abilitiy in field trials, working tests and pointing tests, you judge the conformation in the show ring.

@Bupster
Regarding people who've had dogs before assuming they have the skills: Sometimes it is meaningless and experience counts for naught.

I'm under no illusions, if you gave me a gundog, a hound or a terrier I would struggle. I know nothing about rearing or training a dog of that type. Give me another LGD breed or a Newf or Leo and I'd probably be okay. This is possibly the issue with your friend; culture shock. It's exactly why I'm not brave enough to walk away from my breed because I know nothing about dogs. Familiarity is everything.

It's not what I think I know; it's what I think I don't know. I do know that I know nothing about dogs.

You do all need to sing from the same hymn sheet. If someone in the family doesn't use the same commands, let's the dog jump up, run amok it's confusing for the dog. An excited young dog especially.

Our grandchildren all know to use hand signals and voice commands. They enjoy it.

Very good point.

GSD's show line breed standard is terrible.

Show breed standards are often frankly immoral and cruelly breeding in problems, but hey, as long as they win a pretty ribbon, who cares if this is bad for the dog /future generations.

This is by no means the case in every breed. Please do your research before making sweeping generalisations about a subject you clearly know nothing about.

Nonsense. Just because a few breeds are dodgy doesn’t mean they all are.

An easy reply to make, clearly shows you have no idea. As in all parts of life the majority are fine, a minority have issues which many people and authorities are doing work to improve.

You response also proves the point I, and others, have been making on this thread, if people did not purchase the "must have" breeds and/or cross breeds to create "designer" cross breeds then you would not have puppy farms and bad breeders churning out dogs at rapid rates. French Bulldogs being a classic example, the constant pug crosses all with their silly names and inflated prices.

Take those breeders out of the equation and you are left with the majority of responsible breeders.

No - some show breed standards are immoral but in many breeds, there's no difference between a dog in the ring and your average pet at home,

Aside from the obviously awful attributes in some breeds bred for the show ring (bizarre backends in GSDs, pugs etc with no nose and tiny nares, excess skin on bassets and bloodhounds - the workers are very different) what concerns me are the high COIs you see. Some of them are due to tiny gene pools from the off, others to breeding towards an ideal (the use of popular sires, back-crossing to close relatives AKA line breeding, etc)

Anything over 5% is thought to have a negative impact on the animals, increasing the likelihood of recessive genetic diseases showing up, upping the odds of allergies and cancer, and reducing both litter sizes and lifespan. Of course this is all based on averages, so you might have a dog with a COI of 20% who is perfectly fine and lives to be 15, and another with a COI of 2% who is a mass of allergies, develops PRA and dies of cancer at 9.

I just wish the various kennel clubs and breed clubs around the world were more open to the idea of out-crossing.

I don't think that the show ring is inherently evil (it's good to have a test of conformation and breed type, especially in breeds that are no longer or never have been worked) but it's worth remembering that Jack Russells throve outside the show ring for generations, and that the breed encompassed (still encompasses, in the unregistered population) a huge range of type. The same goes for gun dogs - I could write an essay on the HPRs but this is long enough already.

Interestingly enough there's been some relevant research published on this very recently. The key paragraph in the results is this:

"Within purebred hybrids, while the first filial (F1) generation may benefit from hybrid vigor43and display fewer inbreeding depression effects than their ancestral purebreds63,74,75, subsequent generations i.e., F2, F3…Fx, are likely to return a higher inbreeding co-efficient. Thus, they lose the health benefits from the initial purebred hybrid cross42."

Basically, designer cross breeds/mongrels don't seem to be any healthier than pure breeds once you get past the first generation. But that first generation cross does seem to offer health benefits - though of course what you get from that cross is entirely random.

That's such a good point we have a first generation cross sprocker. Fabulous gun dog. Looking at puppies for sale they're crossing sprockets with cockers or English springer spaniels. I've never been sure about that. Especially if they're introducing show breeds.

Ordering some books.

How did I not know that this is basically what I've been doing for 30 years as regards rearing my LGD.

"I just wish the various kennel clubs and breed clubs around the world were more open to the idea of out-crossing"

I think they are, I certainly am - although I hardly breed, I import new lines into the UK so the gene pool is enlarged. Line breeding and then going out to new lines is a sensible way to do things. I am also of the mindset of "better the devil you know" so will only outcross totally on one side, then it is easier to ascertain where problems, if any, have come from. It is not infallible but it is easier to review lines and pedigrees.

There are plenty of initiatives and health testing to improve the issues which people in the UK are aware of, but it takes time for the faults to be corrected, sometimes 4 or 5 generations in the future, so those who criticise pedigree dogs think nothing is happening when it is. I do not agree with some of the FCI or European individual kennel clubs banning certain breeds from the show ring - it is achieves nothing. Judges are taught to penalise faults, this is what does happen but should happen more. It is easier under FCI because of the grading system which we do not have here, to exclude a dog from winning a CAC or CACIB.

I know I am repeating myself but if there was not the demand for pedigrees and cross breeds then there would be less breeding especially from the puppy farms and similar breeders. When you can have a litter of French Bulldogs and sometimes make £20k of easy money, the breeders do not give a damn about the health issues of the short nosed breeds - why because there is a ready stream of people wanting to buy them. The same with the cross breeds.

I want people to be happy with their dogs - so although I think there should not be so many cross breeds, if people are happy with them and they have done their homework as to where they are coming from then I am sure the cross breeding will continue.

Well, if you've got the Roger Abrantes stamp of approval, you must be doing something right!

@Bupster if you want to go deep into the weeds in COI and all that stuff, this site is pretty good:
https://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/carol-beuchat-phd.html

At some point, I'll do her COI Bootcamp course, which is free.

Ooh, a rabbit hole! Thanks @EdithStourton 😊

me tonight:

@Bupster LOL.
It's more than a hole, it's a whole warren.

And if you're bored, http://www.doggenetics.co.uk is a wonderful place to spend an evening. Canine coat colour explained.