Temperament: The English Springer Spaniel’s famous disposition as a cheerful, playful, gregarious, demonstrative, and high-spirited tail-wagger is not a fable. A Springer might bark at a criminal, but it’s not likely that he’d attack one. Also because of selective breeding for retrieving, most Springers are “soft-mouthed” dogs.

Height: The ideal shoulder height for males is 20″ (51 cm); for females, 19″ (48cm).

Weight: Males should weigh about 49-55 lbs. (22-25 kg). Females should weigh about 40 – 45 lb.

Feeding: An adult Springer, fed a high quality grade of dog food, eats 2-3 cups/day, depending on the amount of exercise he receives. Puppies are fed three to four times per day; adults should be fed twice daily.

Coat: The English Springer Spaniel has an attractive coat which is moderately long, glossy, with feathering on his legs, ears, chest and underbelly. They require frequent brushing, combing, and trimming.

Colours: Liver (brown) with white markings, or black with white markings. More rare, but acceptable colours include tri-colours, blue or liver roan; or predominantly white with tan, black or liver markings.

Exercise: The Springer is a run-two-miles-then-play-a-game-of-Frisbee dog. They should be calm and quiet indoors, and will be, providing they get enough exercise outdoors. These dogs want to be with you as much as possible. If you want a dog to lie at your feet, amuse itself, and be happy all alone from nine-to-five after a 5 minute morning walk — these are not the dogs for you. Most Springers love to have a ‘job’ to do, and obedience training is a great place to start. Many excel in pet therapy, obedience, agility, rally, tracking, flyball, hunt tests, nosework and dog-sports of all kinds.

Training & Obedience: Basic obedience and household rules training are highly recommended. As an absolute minimum, you must teach your Springer to reliably respond to commands to come, to lie down, to stay, and to walk at your side, on or off leash and regardless of temptations. Young Springer puppies are relatively easy to train: they are intelligent, eager to please and respond well to positive methods of obedience training. However, pups can be rambunctious and do not have a very long attention span. Springers SPRING, so jumping up on you and everyone else is a given, unless trained NOT to do so. Once a Springer has learned something though, he tends to retain it well.