Hi, can anyone offer advice my 10 month old boy loves the water and splashes about to his hearts content but wont go out of his depth and swim, I have tried throwing things in for him and he wants to retrieve them but just wont go in deep enough to swim, he even sticks his head in underwater to retrieve things but doesn't realise he can swim?
Just give him time. I've watched my boy, Zeke, learn to love water. From the first time he got his toes wet and freaked out to now when a trip to the creek is one of his favorite things in life. Zeke is very food motivated so I always have plenty of healthy treats and reward him a lot when he does something I want him to do. For a while every time he'd experiment and go in he'd get a good boy and a treat when he got out, same with retrieving sticks, every time he brought it out of the water, good boy/treat. Now he doesn't give a thought. He's almost 11 months. Here's a couple water video's of Zeke, the first from March 2016, the second from today. Today's has a little other stuff first but finishes with Zeke loving the water.
Two things may works - if you are swimming/out in the water he may follow you and realize he can swim on his own. You or another dog swimming may work. Once we spent lots of time walking along the water, getting toes wet, seeing waves etc and Quinn seemed to want to go in after other dogs. We carried her out to just beyond where she could touch and held her so she could see that she was able to paddle and then let he go and swim back to shore (just a couple feet). Took a few trips to the beach to get her confidence up to going in on her own (it was like she didn't know how to go past where she couldn't touch and would take a few attempts to get herself off the ground and swimming). Cannot keep her out of the water now!!
