Rocky

Rocky came to be with us at the end of this past June. I was waiting for a litter that was going to be ready in October, but when I found that we were expecting our second child in February, I decided if I was going to get a second dog right away. The litter due in October would have been about five months old when the baby was due, and I didn’t think that sounded very sane (and I do consider myself to be at least somewhat sane!).  I made some phone calls and sent out some emails and discovered that a breeder in Minnesota had an 11 week old puppy that he was planning on keeping. But, he was also getting married in a few months and already had about five Cockers. He explained that he was planning on keeping this Cocker because it was showing as much or more potential than he had ever seen in a Cocker at this age and he thought it was a strong possibility that he would be breeding him in the future. However, his life already had a fair amount of stress due to the upcoming marriage and the other dogs, and he really didn’t need a puppy to think about right then. After contemplating the situation for a night, he called me back and said he’d sell Rocky (then Christened “Rocket”) to me if I would agree to keep Rocky “in-tact” and allow him to breed to Rocky in the future.

After getting Rocky at 11 weeks of age, I will never again try to get a puppy younger than that. Even though Rocky had not been living in a house prior to me acquiring him, I can count on one hand the number of accidents he had in the house. Once we realized that after he ate his breakfast we had less than one minute to get him outside before he had a bowel movement, we didn’t have any more accidents in the house! He seemed to be extremely advanced socially (both with humans and other dogs) when we got him, and I am attributing this mainly to his opportunity to stay with the litter and his dam for a longer than normal period of time. Even if staying with the breeder had nothing to do with his social skills, the lack of “accidents” in the house were enough for my wife to declare that we would never get another puppy under ten weeks of age!

Rocky’s personality is extremely addictive, for lack of a better word. Very few people that meet him don’t want to take him home! He is an extremely sweet, calm, affectionate dog. That’s not to say that he doesn’t get excited, but his excitement is usually reserved for when he first sees me in the morning and when he knows he is going out to train or to hunt. His is very laid back with kids, and allows the baby to do just about anything to him. One time my wife found the baby calmly pulling up Rocky’s lips and touching his teeth while Rocky patiently stood there and let her examine away! He seems to accept everything in life as if nothing is a big deal. I believe that part of this is because he is extremely loyal and trusting; if he knows I’m okay with something, then he figures it must be okay for him.

Rocky is also extremely athletic. When he runs he gets low to the ground and really stretches out. By the time he was seven months old, he was already as old as Macy and nearly as good at jumping. At just over seven months of age I watched him jump in and out of the back of a 3/4 ton truck with ease! I love watching the Cocker go through cover as he seems to look for obstacles to jump over, rather than simply going around or under. Just today I had him out in a field retrieving frozen pigeons, and he was jumping over bushes bringing the bird back to me. He’s extremely enthusiastic and coupled with his athleticism, it makes him exciting to watch!
As far as Rocky’s hunting prowess goes, he is a fanatical retriever. If Macy’s strength is finding and flushing game, Rocky’s strength is definitely in the retrieve. Whether it’s a ball, a dummy, or a bird, Rocky will NOT quit until he has found the object and brought it to me. If he has failed to make a good mark, he will continue to make wider circles around an area until he has found it, even if it takes five minutes. In fact, one of the things I am working on with Rocky right now is calling him off of a retrieve as he becomes so engrossed in the retrieve it is almost to a fault. If he is having difficulty locating the object and I give him a recall whistle, he will ignore it so that he can continue looking, and when I grab him to bring him back, he looks shocked that I’m making him quit! He also does a great job of following hand signals. He is much further along in his skills than Macy was at that age, although I attribute that mostly to my improved training and handling abilities. For not being even eight months old yet, he continually amazes me at his ability to take “back” and “over” commands. I never formally taught him these commands, but apparently he picked them up from watching me use them with Macy. Rocky also has great stamina. On a recent trip to Kansas for Pheasants (I’ll write about it later), he put in numerous hours of hunting every day, but at the end of the day he always seemed to have more energy left than any of the other dogs or hunters!

 

At just under eight months of age, Rocky weighs about 27lbs. He is a lot leggier than Macy, and I’m guessing he’ll top out in the low 30’s for weight. He has an extremely thick, curly, coat, especially along his back. I was worried that this might cause him to get warm too quickly in mild temperatures, but this hasn’t seemed to be a problem at all yet. His markings are nearly perfectly symmetrical, and even though I didn’t buy him for looks, he’s a pretty handsome lad! Overall we have been extremely pleased with Rocky. We were at first a little hesitant about acquiring a second dog because we didn’t want to mess up what we had with Macy, but he has firmly imbedded himself as part of the family and we can’t imagine life without him. 

Macy

As much as I would like to write about some of the hunting excursions I have had with my Cockers, I think that those stories will have more meaning to the reader if I first tell you about each of my Cockers so you can understand their personalities, quirks, and strengths a little better. Since Macy is the elder of my Cockers, she’s first on the list.
When I moved back to Iowa after a several year hiatus in Wisconsin, I knew that I wanted to get a bird dog. I grew up hunting pheasants over a Yellow Lab, but that wasn’t going to work this time around. You see, I was living in an apartment at the time, and there was no way that I was going to be able to make room for a dog of that size. A few years prior, I had read an article about Field Bred English Cockers, and for some reason I still had that article in my memory. I began doing more research on the breed and contacting breeders. When I found a litter of Cockers only two hours from my house, I sent in my deposit for a female.
That’s how Macy came to be. My wife was sold on the freckles on her face, and I was sold on the pedigree and the reputation of the breeder. When she came home with me at seven weeks of age, she was a cuddly, cute little puppy. The cute part lasted for a while, but the cuddly part quickly disappeared. She quickly became a bundle of energy that never quit. She didn’t destroy things by chewing, but that may have partially been because she barely slowed down enough to chew anything, including her food! I don’t know if it was my lack of experience, but Macy was a very wild puppy. I had a terrible time training her to do anything. It definitely was not because she was not capable of learning. Just the opposite in fact. She showed early on that she was incredibly intelligent, and I think that may have been part of the reason that I had trouble training her.

           

By the time Macy was about ten months old, I felt that she was way behind in her learning. She wasn’t 100% on her recall, often wouldn’t fetch, did not always sit, etc. Then, something clicked and that all changed. In what seemed to be an over-night occurrence, she changed into a sweet dog that was very biddable and trained extremely easily. In fact, later on I joked with my wife later that if I had known how easy it would be once Macy hit ten months, I wouldn’t have bothered to try training her anything prior to that. She still had her ornery moments, but those slowly dissipated as she got older. By the time she was two years old, the ornery moments were non-existent. 

Now, Macy is an extremely sweet, mild mannered dog. The only time she acts remotely crazy is when she is having her morning or even fight (play fight!) with Rocky. The rest of the time, she likes to lay around the house or wait patiently underneath the baby’s high-chair hoping for a Cheerio or some other morsel to fall to the ground. In the field, Macy is a tenacious hunter. She goes non-stop, and does not shy away from any type of cover. She is extremely focused. Early on I occasionally used treats to encourage good behavior from Macy while at home. She would do just about anything to get one of those treats. However, several times I have tried to give her treats while she is working in the field, and she won’t even look at them. It’s as if she’s saying, “I’ve got much more important things to be doing right now instead of eating a stupid treat!” Originally I used my voice to control and direct Macy in the field, but at times it was frustrating because I felt that she was ignoring me. When I switched to using a high-pitched whistle with her, it was night-and-day difference! She became much more responsive, which leads me to  believe that she often didn’t hear me when I was using my voice.

Macy has an amazing memory, but I would be exaggerating if I said she is a great retriever. Instead, she seems to view retrieving more as an obligation than as a pleasure. She will retrieve dummies, but she’d prefer to let Rocky do it if he is around. She is much more keen on retrieving birds, but even then I often feel that her main objective is to flush the bird and that retrieving it is secondary (this is almost the opposite of Rocky). I have given her triple retrieves with dummies on lakes and she has no problem locating and bringing back all three. It seems like retrieving in the water is one type of retrieving that Macy actually enjoys. This is often demonstrated by her extremely aggressive entrances into the water (see below)! She is also passably good at doing blinds, although she struggles at long blinds. I attribute this mainly to my lack of experience while training Macy early on because she starts to lose confidence the further out that she gets.

Overall, we think that Macy is a great dog. She is such a part of the family that we couldn’t imagine life without her. The only time she is in a crate is when I am transporting her somewhere, the rest of the time she has free run of the house. We have absolute confidence that no matter how long we leave her out in the house, and no matter how many baby toys are scattered around, when we return the house will be in the exact same condition as we left it. My wife often takes Macy to “keep her company” when she runs errands because Macy will patiently sit in passenger seat while my wife drives and when she gets in and out of the car. She truly has adjusted to our family to the extent that she is almost zero trouble, and even to the point that she feels like another member of the family. She has progressed to the point that she has even recently begun to take computer classes.