English springer spaniel is up chasing and retrieving hunting dog. The breed is a big field spaniel breed (compare water spaniel). Anyhow ESS is also a good home dog and pet (it is not required to use it as a hunting dog in forests). But the dog is underneath working dog and enjoys running in forests.
English springer spaniel's duty in the forest is to chase up the birds and fur-bearing animals and retrieve the dead or wounded games from land and water. English springer spaniel can be used also in tracking and also chasing.
English springer spaniel is one of the seven British spaniel breeds, which is recognized by the British Kennel Club and FCI (cocker spaniel, clumber spaniel, field spaniel, irish water spaniel, english springer spaniel, sussex spaniel and welsh springer spaniel). These quite same looking breeds's working abilities and origins are very same. All the breeds are quite small and easy trainees for hunting (and nice pets). The Finnish breed association for spaniel breeds is The Finnish Spaniel Club, which was founded in 1964. This association trains the judges, gives advices for breeding, is an agent for puppy marketing, arranges shows and tests, advices the member clubs, publishes one magazine and year book etc. Beside this association for every spaniel breed, every single breed has their own breed association (springer spaniels's association is called The Springer Spaniel Club of Finland).
Breed (ESS) is separated in two types of dogs; hunting type/line (working dogs) and show type/line. This is very common with breeds, which are used in hunting (only some of the breeds do not have any show type). With this breed also the show type is separated to European and American type. Hunting is quite common also with the show type springers, but working type of springers are specialized hunting. In Finland and in Great Britain breeders do not use working and show type dogs for breeding with each other (the types are "separated totally").
English springer spaniel has a long history and it has from the start been a working dog. At this moment it is second popular spaniel in Finland (after cocker spaniel). 90 % of english springers in Finland are European show type dogs. Hunting type's portion of all springers is only couple of per cents (there is born only 3-4 litters in a year). Nowadays there is about 200 english springer spaniel registrations per year in Finland. In Great Britain the english springer has traditionally been the second popular spaniel breed after cocker spaniel (as in Finland). Last year (2000) english springer spaniel was in its homeland the 6th popular breed of all breeds (cocker spaniel was third and labrador retriever number one in the same list!). In Finland the english springer is not one of the 20 most popular breeds, but cocker spaniel is found from the 15th place. In Sweden this lovely breed is in 9th place and in Iceland in 10th place in the list of the most popular breeds of the country. So this is not very rare breed, but the popularity of this breed is not this good in every country of the world. The popularity is best in Middle and Northern Europe (and we have also quite good dogs here...).
Despite of these all different breed types, the breed standard knows only one type of english springer spaniel (it doesn's separate the different types). English springer spaniel is a strong dog as the bird dogs were before, but also balanced and classy as the cocker spaniel in these days. English springer spaniel is also compared quite often with cocker spaniel despite the larger size and less elegant contours. Sometimes I found myself also comparing springer to cocker and describing it to almost same with cocker only a bit larger (especially when descibing to people, who do not know the breed).