The Cocker Spaniel 251 



One of the marty tales they used to tell in connection with the irrepressible 

 Dan O'Shea was that on one occasion, when showing these two cockers, 

 the judge pegged back one, telling him it was no good. Dan went to work 

 on her with shears and knife, and with half her feather gone led her in in 

 place of the one entered in the other class, was highly complimented upon 

 this spaniel and got with the blue ribbon the assurance that it was worth 

 a whole carload of the one he had brought in before. 



There was little dependence to be placed upon the results in breeding 

 from this blood of mixed field and cocker strains, some being large and 

 some small, so that the only difference was that of the dividing line of 

 the twenty-eight-pound limit as to cockers. Above that, the cocker's 

 brother was a field spaniel; but the end to this state of affairs was rapidly 

 approaching, and arrived in the shape of a puppy, imported in utero, and 

 by Mr. Farrow's Obo out of Chloe II., a Bullock-bred bitch. This black 

 puppy Mr. J. P. Willey bought from Mr. Pitcher and named Obo II., 

 after his then well-known sire, for the Obo strain had become very prominent 

 in England. To Obo II. we owe the sudden elevation of the cocker and 

 the fixing of type, which so quickly changed the appearance of the cocker 

 benches. 



The remarkable thing about Obo II. was that for some time he got 

 nothing but solid black, no matter what colour the bitch might be. His 

 litter brother Hornell Silk was not quite so prepotent, and from him came 

 mixed colours, while from both of them later on we got buffs, and from 

 them the reds. We wrote as follows of Obo II. in October, 1884: 



"About a year ago it was rumoured among the spaniel men that there 

 was a clinking good puppy up in New Hampshire, owned by a person 

 named Willey, who had lately taken to the fancy. Rumour is frequently 

 astray in such things, but this time no mistake had been made. Mr. 

 J. P. Willey gave quite a long figure for the puppy and named him Obo II., 

 and it was not long before we heard of breeders of experience sending their 

 bitches all the way to Salmon Falls. Young as he was at that time, he had 

 yet matured so early that large litters were the rule from the beginning, 

 and that his vitality has not been impaired is evidenced from his first love, 

 Critic, having just thrown a second litter of twelve to him. As usual 

 in his litters, all are black, none of the difficult-to-sell livers turning up to 

 annoy the breeder. 



"Obo II. was first shown at Manchester, N. H., in September, 1883, 



