Spaniel

Charles Goodall and Julia Gasow (1984)[1] write that spaniels were "transformed from untrained, wild beaters, to smooth, polished gun dogs."

Spaniels possess a great share of intelligence, affection, and obedience, which qualities, combined with much beauty, make them highly prized as companions.The origin of the word spaniel is described by the Oxford English Dictionary as coming from the Old French word espaigneul which meant "Spanish (dog)"; this in turn originated from the Latin Hispaniolus which simply means "Spanish".

[3] Sixteenth-century English physician John Caius wrote that the spaniels of the time were mostly white, marked with spots that are commonly red.

[4] In the appendices added to the 1909 re-print of Caius' work, the editors suggested that the type of dogs may have been brought into the British Isles as early as 900 BC by a branch of the Celts moving from Spain into Cornwall and on into Wales, England and Ireland.

Their size is like that of worthless and greedy domestic table dogs; squat, emaciated, shaggy, dull of eye, but endowed with feet armed with powerful claws and a mouth sharp with close-set venomous tearing teeth.

Colonel David Hancock[7][page needed] adds a belief that the sporting type of spaniel originated in China from the short-faced ancestors of dogs such as the Pekingese, Pug and Shih Tzu.

[9] On the basis of function and hunting style, the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) draws a distinction between Continental and Anglo-American spaniels.