Springers are one of the breeds you have to be very careful with. The show people absolutely love them and have pretty much ruined them for the field. They advertise them as great hunting dogs but my experience is that very very few actually hunt, and their owners don't hunt at all. Years ago I knew a guy in the N.W. that worked with a well known springer handler and he hunted. He caught hell from the handler every time he did because it supposeably messed up the coat. The last show people that I would even have concidered buying a dog from, in fact I did, were Bob and Tillie Geiger, both long gone along with their very good dual purpose dogs. But the good news is that there is a field branch of the English Springer Spaniel Club of America and they have very good dogs. They are a world of difference from the show dogs and just as the show dogs are worthless in the field, these dogs would be laughed out of the show ring.
what you are seeing in the springer world is almost what you saw in the cocker world except they have a following of field people. One of my all time favorite hunting dogs was a springer, "Skipper" out of Geigers Cheif Geronimo, that was a long time ago.
