English Toy Spaniels are lovely little dogs – jaunty, loving, and delightful to live with. Our English Toy Spaniels descend from royal spaniels bred to leap after birds in the field and forest. From the 1600s through the Victorian Era the Toy Spaniels ruled supreme. Early Toy Spaniels were crossed with Pugs, Japanese Chin and other flatter faced breeds to create the dogs we know today. It wasn't until the 1920s that the English Toy Spaniel and the Cavalier King Charles were bred as two separate and distinctly different breeds. FYI: The English Toy is known as the King Charles Spaniel everywhere but in the USA.
While your English Toy may never chase a bird in their life, they still have the genetics of those long-ago spaniels hardwired in their DNA. Our little Gio, our resident English Toy Spaniel, will still stick his little nose into the air to sniff the doggie info that floats his way.
Like their cousin, the Cavalier, the English Toy Spaniel often has rough, dry nose problems. If your ETS has a crust-covered, extremely dry nose it may be Nasal Hyperkeratosis, a condition in which nose tissue grows aggressively. The good news is all of these dry nose problems can be treated and a healthy balance maintained with routine Nose Butter usage.