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• American Cocker Spaniel Heads

From the standard:

Skull--Rounded but not exaggerated with no tendency toward flatness; the eyebrows are clearly defined with a pronounced stop. The bony structure beneath the eyes is well chiseled with no prominence in the cheeks. The muzzle is broad and deep, with square even jaws. To be in correct balance, the distance from the stop to the tip of the nose is one half the distance from the stop up over the crown to the base of the skull.               

                                                                               

The photos of Austin (left) show you how to block out a proper head. You can see that the proportions match pretty closely the suggestions from the standard.

Most pet cockers (and many show lines) are producing heads which are not ideal and that appear flat and short. Leaving a crown can make the head appear more correct and more attractive at the same time. As you can see from the picture below, a flat head on a cocker is not that appealing and a little hair left on his head would have made him appear to be closer to the standard. A flat head also makes the ears appear incorrectly set and the muzzle to appear longer than it should be for a “correct” cocker head.

This cocker gets a shaved head, not a crown. As a result his head appears flatter and his muzzle appears longer. By laving a crown, he would appear more rounded and his muzzle would look shorter.

Grooming is about optical illusion. Leaving hair on his head would give the illusion of a much better bred dog.

We will discuss each part of the cocker spaniels head and how it is groomed separately from the other parts. It is easier to teach you to do a correct head if it is broken down into steps.

Ears are the first step on the road to a perfectly groomed cocker head. Like dogs there are a million ways to do ears and each will be correct if it makes the owner of the dog happy. There are, however, things that will apply to every ear for it to be done well.      

      

Notice the lines on his ears. The straight lines denote thirds of the ear and the slight V at the bottom of the second line shows the shape his ears were clippered into. NOTICE that the lip line is right in line with the outermost part of that second line. That is where your clipper line should be on most cocker spaniels.

The basic lines are easy even though some dispute them. ONE THIRD of the length of the entire ear should be shaved, but the line should not extend below the lip line.

Many people clipper a straight line, but I prefer a V shape clipped into the ear. It will give a longer appearance to the ear and will allow you to make an improper ear set appear more normal. It works on ears that are too short naturally or a head that is lacking in top skull as well. To do this you hold the ear in your hand and beginning in the middle of the ear, go towards the outside of the ear clipping against the grain, towards the skull. It doesn’t have to be a deep V, it can be shallow, just make it fit the dog’s conformation.

I almost always use a 40 blade on the inside of the ear to remove hair and keep the ear healthy. You can use a ten blade backwards if you like, but there is a flap of skin on the ear that will catch and you can cut a dog if you aren’t careful. I prefer to use a 30 or 40 and go with the grain, floating off the edge of the ear and then following up with shears along the edge to give a nice tight appearance. I prefer to trim the ends of my ears when I am finished with the dog, but to do it, you use thinning shears and trim any rough edges and straggly ends to make the ear appear neater and keep the length under control.

After the ears I move onto the stop. The stop is the area in between the eyes and should be cleaned out pretty well. I usually use a 30 blade backwards to give it a deeper, cleaner appearance. I use a reverse “v” shape to remove hair from the stop.

Tyler (left) has a shallow stop and I can make it appear much deeper by using a tight blade and cleaning out as much hair as possible. Austin ( right) 

has a nice deep stop that requires no extra chiseling.

I still go tight to help show off the eyes. Also, removing the hair from the top will make the hair stay out of the dog’s eyes longer.

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