hope not scared

got a black lab this year and man is she great. never had a lab before but had long hair blue weim, that was trained for feild and watr . at 4mon the lab was trained like u wouldnt belive . sit, stay , no , and retr. doves in september . in oct. she was on the ducks and trying to move the geese. we had some ice on the edge of the rivers , i shot a duck that landed on the ice , she grabed it and turned around and fell through the ice. she had a hard time gettin out and it was to deep for me to get her but after about 30-45 sec. she was out with bird in mouth. she was runnin around havin a good time. the next time we were out i shot 2 geese there and she would only go in up to the point where she had 2 swim then follow them down from the bank. everythings been froze and i dont want to get her in the river again, so i hope shees not shot for water work. when it gets warm im gonna get her back in the water and keep my fingers crossed.

That's the only thing you can do I guess. Sounds like a good idea. That's what I would do. Just throw some dummies out for her just past where she can't stand...then a little farther....and so on. We did this with our girl labs who don't hunt with us. They hate swimming, but after we did that, they retrieved the dummies, just like our boys. (kinda) Laughing

Hope it works for you. Just don't give up, and keep working with her.

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A dog's learning is place specific. So just like you have to teach your dog to heal in many different places, I would think that the dog would have to learn to be scared of water in many different places. Following that logic, the next time I introduced that dog to water, I would take it to a very different location.

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Life is too short to hunt with a beardless dog!

I think what has happened is that the dog is scared due to the situation with the ice. That retreive probably should have been called off unless you knew for sure that the ice was safe. Hindsight is always 20/20 though! In my mind, you are doing the right thing. Wait until it warms up quite a bit and start training again. The main goal is that you have to make retreiving in the water fun again because last time it wasn't! It also doesn't hurt to take the dog swimming in the summer. If the dog can play with you in the water and sees that you are okay being in the water, the dog may be a little less hesitant to get in. This is just going to take time though. It would be the same for one of us if we went through the ice like that. We would definitely think twice before doing anything like that again. Good luck to you and your dog!

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