@spartathesheltie Pursuant to our conversation :) about the American cocker at Crufts yesterday, and their ability to carry birds in those itty bitty mouths, I got a few more pics.
Show cockers have these bizarre sculpted clips meant to create the illusion that their muzzles are tiny and their eyes are about to pop out of their heads, their ears are even longer and less useful (not to mention the body is a Swiffer). I've seen retired show dogs with more utilitarian clips, and they look... well, like Tristan. Their mouths are small, sure, but reasonably proportional.
I've *had* cockers carry some pretty large, and heavy, stuff... including one whole opossum. (Galahad was so *very* proud of his giant rat. It was also only playing dead, and we put it outside the fence to recover. It was a third his size, but he managed to carry it in his delicate lil cocker mouth without a single tooth mark.)
I know I don't often provide a lot of size context, but my cockers are truthfully quite little, and they're about average for American cockers. I suggest that the carrying capacity of cockers has to do with their accordion-like lipflap expansion. I think we could inflate those mouths like a balloon. Seriously, I think the American cocker has hamster somewhere in its ancestry.
