Breed Profiles

The American Water Spaniel is the dog nobody at the park has heard of, and that is exactly why I like him. My Wells is a curly brown mop with the build of a retriever and the spark of a spaniel, and he was built for the lakes of the upper Midwest, where a hunter needed one dog that could flush a bird from the reeds and then swim out and bring it back without a second thought.

He is medium-sized, forty pounds of dense muscle under a liver-brown coat that ranges from tight curls to a looser wave. The tail is the giveaway, a thick otter tail that slaps the floor when he is happy and acts as a rudder when he swims. The first time I threw a stick into cold water and he went in without hesitation, I understood the breed's whole point: this is a dog that was never meant to stay on the shore.

What I did not expect was the voice. Spaniels are talkers, and the AWS is no exception. Wells has opinions about the mail, about the shower running, about the cat's life choices, and he delivers them in a rolling series of grumbles that sound almost like words if you squint. He is not a barker so much as a commentator, and once I framed it that way, I found it charming instead of annoying.

The Water Is the Whole Point

The breed nearly vanished because the kind of hunting it was bred for fell out of fashion, and only a handful of dedicated people kept it alive through the last century. That scarcity means most owners find their dog through word of mouth or a breed club, not a pet store. I got Wells from a retired trainer who had worked the breed for thirty years, and the orientation session lasted longer than the sale.

Exercise for this dog is not optional. A walk around the block leaves him restless; a swim leaves him asleep by the heater for the rest of the evening. I take him to the lake twice a week in the warm months and to an indoor pool in winter, because a water spaniel denied water gets inventive, and his inventions involve my furniture. The day I filled a kiddie pool in the backyard was the day my rugs were finally safe.

Coat care is more than it looks. That curly fur mats if you ignore it, especially behind the ears and under the legs, and I learned to brush him every other day with a slicker and a comb. He loves the attention and falls asleep mid-session, which makes the job easy. After a swim I rinse him down; the lake gunk otherwise dries into a crust that takes forever to undo.

Training came easier than I feared. Wells wants to please in a way that the tougher terriers I have owned never did, but he bores fast, so I keep lessons short and end on a win. He retrieved a dummy on the first try and then looked at me as if to say that was obvious, which is the most spaniel thing he has ever done. Recall took longer, because a nose that good hears the duck call of a distant pond, but a long line and patience closed the gap.

Health has been good, with the usual caveats for a rare breed. The breeder screened for eye conditions and a hip issue called retinal dysplasia, and Wells came with papers showing both clear. His one quirk is a sensitive stomach; rich treats send him to the rug, so we stick to a plain salmon formula and he has been solid. The vet calls him a textbook patient, which I translate as boring, and I could not be happier.

People confuse him with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever constantly, and I have stopped correcting them beyond a smile. The Chessie is bigger and darker and far less portable; Wells is the compact cousin, built for a small boat and a single hunter, not a guided expedition. Knowing the difference has saved me from more than one awkward "is that a Chessie?" at the boat ramp.

With my niece and nephew he is a saint, letting them climb over him like a piece of furniture and only ever moving away if they got too close to his tail. He seems to understand that small humans are a different category of creature, one that requires tolerance rather than training. I supervise anyway, because that is what you do, but the patience is genuine.

He is a Velcro dog in the house, never more than a room away, and a thunderbolt in the field. I have owned flashier breeds, but none that fit my actual life this well. The American Water Spaniel is a secret worth keeping, and I am tempted to keep him that way, except that more people should know a dog this good exists.