We went out to train some retrieving today. We had decided to drive the 30 minutes to a lovely area with some nice lakes. The weather was warm, but tolerable, and the lakes were so pretty, dark-blue-green, very pure water. Anyway. This was my pup's (now 7 months old) first time in other water than the little pond at home.
She is a chesapeake bay retriever. Chessies love water. We had planned for her to get just one or two marks on water. She got those, and solved them perfectly. Jumping straight in. As most young dogs she forget to use the hind legs when she swims. That means that she is almost vertical in the water and the front paws splashes so much that a veritable column of water is in front of the dog's face....Seriously there is so much water up in the air that the dog has trouble seeing anything in front of it. But she found the dummies and after a little struggle (her front paws kept hitting the dummy when she went to pick up) got the dummies back to me.
After the second mark she slipped away from me (baaaad handler!
) and jumped back in the water. Then she shortcircuited... feet gets wet -> brain short circuits -> ears fry and goes dysfunctional.
Forget that 100% reliable recall we had....she was dead to the world splashing around catching water bubbles. Ok, nothing to get upset about, but she was getting tired, and all the splashing had made her loose her orientation...she was swimming in circles and starting to panic. Still not hearing me... I was getting ready to jump in after her if needed, but first we tried an age-old trick. Hubby (who has a better arm than me) threw a dummy right in front of her nose. Bingo. Reset to retrieve mode -> brain kicks back in...she got the dummy in her mouth and zzaaapp there is the ears going back into action... I called for her and gave the come whistle. Then I just kept talking to her to guide her.... the splashing got worse, as she got more tired.... but she made it in, brought the dummy to me...and turned around ready to go back in the lake ("Swim, swim, swim, swim,swim,swim!!")... got her leash on and we walked away with a lot of celebrating brave puppy... a final dummy...on land, away from the lake...a little heeling and LLW ..then back in the car. We got home two hours ago, she has slept, and is now ready to go again. Gotta love that. 
