I have been having some trouble recently recalling puzzle when she is in water. If she just goes in for a swim she has an urge to try and retrieve something even if i did not throw anything for her to retrieve. If i catch her before she goes in she will come back but its not so easy when she is swimming. If we are doing retrieves she is fine i have no trouble getting her out. I have tried walking away but she gets so engrossed in trying to find something to retrieve that she is not focused on me and does not notice i have walked off.
I have this with Charlie - if he gets the retrieve, no problem. But if he expects one but can't find it, forget it, his ears don't work...x 100 in water. I have a vivid memory of the time a total stranger (trying to impress his girl friend) was irresponsible enough to throw a stone into the sea....(it didn't bounce)....Charlie looked like he was going to make France.... I discussed it with my trainer - she told me to stop throwing retrieves into water, and asked me whether I could stop Charlie when he was expecting a retrieve in all circumstances on land? Eg when I'd sent him? When he was racing another dog for a ball? The answer was (and is...) no. If I can't do it on land, since water is a massive distraction, I can't hope to do it when Charlie is in water....
Thanks julie I have not tried stopping her en-route to a retrieve from water so may have to give that a go. She is very good with her stop, going away, coming too, with other dogs around. She does it to whistle and voice command.
I was on a training seminar a couple of weeks ago with a trainer I haven't been with before. He said something very interesting; that when a dog has a strong prey drive or retrieve he does very few marked retrieves with them, but instead does lots more memory retrieves. He said a memory retrieve helps with steadiness and is mentally more challenging for the dog. So for instance he thre a dummy into the lake, we turned and walked away, then another dummy was thrown in front of us, the dogs were turned around again and sent for the dummy in the water, and then once they were back, turned again and sent for the retrieve on land. Doesn't really help with your particular problem, other than building up steadiness and reducing the high excitement of a splash in water, I suppose...
I think that's a good point - there is no point in doing a marked retrieve into water, really. All it does for most dogs is ramp up the excitement of water (it's not like many dogs need to practice fetching stuff from water). Good fun, of course, but not helpful for training.
