I prefer to query people here rather than other, more dedicated internet forums. For various reasons.
I am making a blanket type inquiry on general Toughness of dogs. And by toughness, I am meaning things such as pain tolerance, environmental tolerance, or simply the lack of being swayed or affected by being uncomfortable.
I have had just a small handful of hunting dogs. Both were Chesapeake Bay Retrievers. The first was a female, the second was a male. I don't recall much of the female. I was very young and the dog was given away without my consent......life lessons learned there. The male I had as an adult. He had a high pain tolerance. But some seperation anxiety that got in the way of really testing much else.
Though not a hunting dog, my current adult dog is an Australian Cattle Dog. To me, he is the standard to be judged against. His pain tolerance is off the charts. I've seen him continue about his business with flesh hanging. He has broken ice to play Fetch. Will find water to lie down in to cool off in January. Just an all around tough guy.
My current puppy is the opposite. He is a softy. Wasnt expecting it, but he is. He needs to paw and fluff up a perfect nest before he lays down. Every place he lays must be padded. If we are sorting laundary for weekend chores, he is found coiled up, camoflauged in with the Darks....sound asleep. He is shivering immediately after getting in the water. The same water I am standing in up to the Blue Line myself in shorts. I don't find it at all cold.
In my experience, this is the dog. Not much you can train or change about it.
Thoughts or experiences? Of course this is the internet, so I would not expect anything less than...."My dog was breaking 2 inches of ice duck hunting in North Dakota last January...it was -5 degrees that day".
In my opinion a dog's toughness shouldn't be confused with the dog's level of courage. And to me, it sounds like your dog's level of courage when it comes to water may be very low. Meaning it is not shivering due to the temperature, but extremely nervous or scared because it hasn't been introduced to enough water.
You obviously know a thing or two about dogs, I'm just throwing that idea out there.
My lab is very "tough." Meaning, he has fallen out of a pickup truck doing 65mph and was chasing grasshoppers minutes later. Nose bleeding, limping everywhere, huge chunk of road rash, etc. But his tail kept wagging the whole time and he would still jump in and out of the truck.
But that doesn't mean he won't tremble when we are @ 10,000' and lightning strikes nearby. He'll have to be exposed to those things more and more before he grows accustomed to it.
Some dogs are simply born with lots of courage. It matters not whether they have been exposed to things or not. They just go. Slippery floor, pool full of water, a grate on a garage floor, or whatever.
Others need to be exposed to those things before they'll gain any degree of comfort and I expect that is what your dog will require.
Travis
