258 The Dog Book 
card. The change in the standard was not made to correct an evil, but to 
provide for one that breeders had not been able to cope with successfully. 
Obo II. was always considered a small dog, and he weighed twenty-two 
and one-half pounds. Mr. Mason records him as even twenty-three 
pounds. 
To show that we are not writing fancies for facts, as many are apt to 
do with regard to past dogs, we will take Mr. Mason’s figures in “Our 
Prize Dogs,” being the record of the winning dogs during 1887. We 
find sixteen cocker dogs recorded with weights, and nineteen bitches. Two 
of the latter we will discard, for the reason that Mr. Mason says they 
were not show specimens in any way. They weighed twenty-one and 
twenty pounds respectively, and those who wish to consider it right to bring 
them into the discussion are at liberty to do so. If the cockers recorded 
in this book were being shown to-day twenty-two out of the thirty-three 
would be disqualified as being over weight, and five of the remaining eleven 
are on the top mark of present admission weight, or exactly twenty-four 
pounds. The dogs over twenty-four pounds included the following promi- 
nent winners: Black Pete, Brant, Compton Boniface, Dandy W., Hornell 
Silk, Keno, Ned Obo, Peerless Gloss and Royal. Of the five under that 
weight Obo II. and Doc were the only two good ones, Master Shina and 
Zeppo being a long way below them in quality. Of the bitches Miss Obo 
II. was twenty-seven pounds, Juno W. a pound heavier, and Shina was 
the best of the five recorded at twenty-four pounds, while Widow Cliquot 
was twenty-six pounds. : 
It would not matter so much if the weight of the majority ran toward 
the upper limit of twenty-four pounds, but the tendency is the other way, 
and there are more in the lower three pounds—that is, from eighteen to 
twenty-one pounds—than from the latter weight up to twenty-four, and 
unless the cocker is to be relegated to the parlour breeds it will be necessary 
to counteract the tendency toward decreasing weight. For our part, we 
would like to see the low limit raised to twenty pounds and keep what 
are practically toys out of the classes. We are aware that breeders do not 
support the ideas here presented, but as they do not seem to be able to 
do anything but get a decreasing average in size, it is not to be expected 
that they will condemn what they want to win with and to sell. The 
reason that there was no opposition to the change in the weight rule was 
that it interfered with no one, for no one had, or seemed able to breed 
