Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Some dogs apparently can not swim.

Dude, in THREE AND A HALF FEET OF WATER??? AFAIC, You're just F'ing stupid...

I have had several Standard Poodles that were retrievers.They were bred in Germany as an all around hunting dog and have webbed feet just like a Lab.If a dog is not introduced to water at a young age they seldom swim.When they used to have the DU show in Oshkosh a guy had a miniature poodle that would launch and retrieve.

If I’d of seen that I’m afraid I might’ve pushed that old bitch into the water and rescued her dog instead of her. 😡

We used to have a beagle that swam like a retriever. We would take her fishing and everytime we hooked a fish the beagle would jump in and swim around the fish barking. She was a real gem!

Buddy had a female yellow lab that would do that too. We’d have to tie her up when we’d take her fishing with us.

Now that right there is an ugly animal. 😂

Got a buddy who has a fish pond. His bulldog fell or jumped in when nobody was around. Old Ernie came home to find his dog drowned, so it is a thing I guess.

I have a german shepherd that I took to the river in the boat last year. She loved running in the sand on the beaches. I got in to cool off and she ran down the beach and bailed off in the river came up sputtering and started swimming like she was born to it. She can swim upstream against the current. Looks like a gator in the water. She loves to swim.

I start my pups early in a little wading pool, sometimes before they are weaned.

Back when I had a Doberman and a Pit mix, I used to regularly take them to a lake, toss a stick in as far as I could, and they'd swim right out, grab it, and bring it back for another throw. No learning curve. They just knew how to swim.

Buddy had a male Doberman that would dive for rocks.

I know a woman who has a Scottish terrier and she says he can’t swim and that’s a common trait of the breed. I had never heard of a dog that couldn’t swim before that.

Yes indeed, neighbors English bull got into my yard and went into the pool several years ago. Thankfully I was out in teh backyard. Got to her at the third time down. Don't think she another to go. Basically sunk like a rock.

The face only a mother could love. 😜

Yes, the kids have one of those also. One Old English BD, and one English BD. The male, the English is a mess. Almost a year old and has already had three surgeries. I have never heard of an English which was healthy. The Old English, on the other hand, is athletic as hell. (except for swimming) She runs laps around their huge yard and jumps short fences for hours.

Speaking of dogs which do swim: My son has a Mallinois about six years old. He is a wonderful dog, 100% devoted to the kids in the family, especially the little boy just one year older than the dog.

We were up at the lake last year, and my son loaded his three kids into the boat which had been tied off on a sandy beach behind the camp trailers. They took off for the other end of the lake to do some fishing, and as they got out about a half mile, we noticed a brown dot moving along in the wake of the boat.

Their dog, Titan was paddling in pursuit of the boat as fast as he could go. The kids had no idea the dog had jumped in the lake, and they were not stopping until they got to their favorite fishing hole a couple miles away.

I got one of the other grandkids to run up the shore line, parallel to the dogs path and call him over to shore. I am sure he would have stayed on the trail of that boat until he became exhausted and drowned. After that they put
Titan on the boat with them before they left.

My German Shepherd, when I was a kid, did this. Toss a rock in, and she'd dive to the bottom to retrieve it.

My head agrees, but my heart doesn't always follow what my head thinks. I've told my wife in no uncertain terms that I will not let her make any attempt to save either of our pups, if God forbid, they get in a life or death situation in the water. I'd knock her out first, literally. Would I be able to watch either of them drown, if I felt there was even a small chance my being able to save them? Probably not. Which is why in my training of them as waterfowl hunters I will not stand for them disobeying me, or going in the water without my permission. Doing so results in harsh punishment and the end of fun-fun swim time.

I'll probably regret posting this, but it's definitely on-topic...


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About this time, Vito lost all the color in his face, and was wailing at Oz to leave the bird--a gorgeous full-plumed bull greenhead-- which he had clenched in his gob, and to power through the ice. I abandoned any further attempts regarding the cut right away, and ran to Vito. "WHAT DO WE DO?" he screamed. I grabbed him by shoulder and pushed him onto the ice as I jumped off the bank with him. The weight of us on the sheet was enough to crack it, and with determined stomping, we were able to break sections off the main mass lining the shore.

We gained about 15 feet towards where Oz was trapped in maybe 3-4 minutes, but the channel in that section of river changes rapidly, and we found that in 15 feet out we'd gotten to the rim of our chest waders in depth. Vito saw himself that we'd never make it in time, and started panicking and screaming and crying in earnest. Between the body language of Oz, who'd gone quiet with his whining vocalizations but got louder in his now rattling, rapid respiration, which sounded like a cyclical, rapid-fire sequence of a cat trying to cough up a hairball, and the distance we needed to close but couldn't, the dark specter of doom loomed over the scene. It wasn't until that moment that I admitted to myself that the terrible reality was that Oz was going to die a grim death unless something drastic was done. Vito looked at me, tears now flowing, and said, "I'm going for him". I looked him dead in the eye, and said, "I can't let you do that, man. You'll drown too." "Well I'm not gonna' just sit here and watch my [bleep] dog drown! I can't!" His despair, and mine, were palpable. When Oz let out a pained whine, one more like a scream, with his efforts at treading water now making slow pairs of irregular plopping sounds, Vito and I looked at each other and began ripping off our coats.

We're both very familiar with the river, and knew that Oz was above the channel, and at dead low water is around 12'-15' deep. As such, there would be no wading out. Our regular spot a hundred yards away, at high tide you could walk out to a distance beyond where Oz was, relatively speaking, but neither here nor there. Either way one looked at it, Oz was 40' or 50' beyond where we could wade without going in over our waders, and with that distance jammed with ice sheets that took some work breaking, well shytfukk man, the stupid mutt was right there, but then close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I knew in my heart two things then: that Vito was going for him, and that I was pissed. Now he had me in a bad spot. I'd already decided I wasn't going to risk my life for Oz. God forgive me, and were it a family member, child or close friend, or hell, likely for most any stranger, I know what would happen. A pet, though? This wasn't a 'it'll be tricky but we'll pull it off with some work', or 'we need to be careful but can do it', or a 'let's evaluate for a few and devise a plan' type deal.

Vito had stripped off not only his jacket, but his sweater and a vest. A thermal long-sleeved undershirt was all that was left on top. He ripped the straps off his waders, and hauled them off too, as well as a pair of sweatpants (as I've said, it was a *cold* one that day). His second pair of socks were last. He looked at me and waded in. His body language as it reacted to the freezing water was painful. He got to the ice shelf where we'd busted off a few sheets, and started trying to break off the next sheet with his fists. He'd underestimated his strength, lack of leverage and the force required to break the ice. I shouted out something to the effect of, "pull your torso on the ice and let your body weight work for you..." I figured the ice would either hold him, or he'd break through. Either one would help get him closer to Oz. It did both. The first section held for about a second and a half after he jump-dove out onto it, before cracking beneath him, sending him face-first into the drink alongside the now busted pieces of a slab perhaps roughly the size of a standard sheet of plywood and a bit, but thicker. When we head out in boats we all have PFDs and throwables, etc., but as we knew we'd be hunting from shore, well, we didn't take anything out of the boats.

SO, you've heard of the 'gasp reflex'? Well, in case anyone's from a warm place where such things are never brought up in conversation, it refers to the subconscious reflex of the body when exposed to--usually immersion I -- in extremely cold water. The body reacts in a bunch of different ways, but one that is audible and virtually a given results from the body in question reacting subconsciously by the shock and taking a sudden deep inhalation. You've seen folks getting ready to dive underwater where they need to hold their breath for an extended period, right? The gasp reflex looks like someone taking their last breath before submerging, with mouth agape. Perhaps like those who've heard a human bean screaming out in fear and/or pain, in a for-real life or death situation can attest, some guttural sounds made by man are truly awful, and chilling.

Vito flailed his arms out above his head and to his sides in an obvious panic, vocalizing what the signals his body was sending to his brain. His body knew to tell him with waves of bio-electrical impulses, bombarding his brain with cease and desist messages. With crazy eyes that fell upon me when he surfaced and spun, seeking a handhold, he turned away from me and back to Oz, screaming again for his dog to hold on. I'd stopped focusing on Oz when Vito went in, but knew at that very moment, seeing how far Vito needed to go to get to Oz, and what shape he was in, only 20 seconds into the attempt, that without help, he was going to die.

I scanned the bank for anything to use, and frantically tried to think if there was anything in the truck, up a steep bank some 30' high, overgrown with trees and snow-covered and some 50 yards away in his field while I ran about our area. There wasn't anything, I determined, excepting a long, stout branch. There were trees all around me. I ran up the bank and into the trees, dismissing anything under 20 feet long. I saw a dead limb half buried in the snow, probably 18 feet long (I could see the tip coming out of the snow) and yanked on it on the thick end. It broke off in my hands. OMFG please let me find something I can use. This is life or death, right now.

I turned and shot a stare at Vito from my slight elevation on the bank, and through the trees. He'd stopped screaming, and had made headway, but was still perhaps 15 feet from Oz. His movements then however, to my gut-wrenching horror, were already that of a drunk. A second later, I saw his head go under. I screamed his name and wheeled back around, scanning now for anything I could use, my mind spinning and in overdrive, with an intensity brought only in such cases. I knew I couldn't do it, but getting frantic because everything on the ground was snow-covered and as such, almost impossible to judge the suitability for the task, I tried for 5 seconds to break off an entire sapling of ~25 feet and 5" in diameter at the base. It did what every young maple like that does when some dunce tries to bust it: it bends, and not much at that. If you had the means to torque it, you could turn it into a pretzel before it broke off.

I screamed in frustration and turned again to look at Vito, and he was but maybe 4 feet now from Oz, who I saw was very much still alive, but now just hanging on to the lip of the ice with his paws, and slipping back down. I remember a snapshot in my mind's eye of that scene, and even though they were maybe 80 feet away, I could see Oz shivering uncontrollably as he tried not to get sucked under the ice slab right next to him, focusing on one other thing--holding onto the ice in front of him. The stupid sonofabitch still had the [bleep] greenhead in his mouth, by the way. I ran back down to where Vito shed his clothes, and I looked out to see Vito break try five or six times to climb on top of the last piece of ice forming a bridge between him and his dog. With a final effort, he broke through. And as he did, he disappeared under the surface a second time. I screamed his name again, and it seemed like it took almost a second for his head to break surface again. I screamed to him that I was coming, and to hold on.

I debated quickly and decided I'd leave my waders on. Unlike what some might have you believe, with neoprene waders, even if they fill completely with water, will not drag you to the bottom. They in fact stay relatively buoyant, and with some trapped air, in the legs, you're not sinking. You can still drown, of course, especially when the medium you're floating in is a frigid river with a current running a couple knots. Oh, and yeah, the river is jammed with ice with floes as large as football fields and up to a foot thick...

I gave the treeline one last glance while probably saying a prayer, beginning my charge into the water. Quite literally, I'd already made my fist splash into the water, I guess mid-stride, saw just across the small 'beach' off to my left and now slightly behind me, a dead tree about 40' high. It had several black holes that stood out in contrast with the snow that had drifted against it's exposed grey roots. The tendrils attached to the trunk were dead, but still stubbornly anchored it's topside end into the earth. It had no branches. I turned without stopping and sprinted (fine, something approximating what one might usually consider a sprint) as fast as I could, giving my all to get my portly mass to collide with, and bust that tree down. In 24HCF terms, I guess you could say I was going for over-penetration. My body was going to give, or that [bleep] dead tree was. With maybe a 75 foot dead run at it, I dove into the trunk, hitting it with my torso and shoulder.

Hard to describe, kind of, but I guess it was pretty similar to a base runner in a pennant game on third representing the winning run. Steaming for home, knowing long before getting there that he's going to be outrun to the plate by the ball, and his one shot at scoring involves decking the waiting, blocking catcher, the goal is of course to pop the ball out. I think I almost lost consciousness at impact, but knew I heard a loud crack. I picked myself up, my face covered in snow and my shoulder numb, and pivoted my to look back again for Vito. He was huddled with Oz, head down on the crook of his arm on the edge of the ice sheet. He wasn't moving.

I hurled myself back onto the water's edge, screamed again to hold on, and to wake the [bleep] up and fight. I was coming NOW, but needed him helping. I turned, and went at the tree again, determined as I've ever been to make this happen. I will never understand or be able to explain exactly why it happened, but when I hit the tree the second time the base of the trunk just below where I was battering it broke off clean. With a shower of bark and snow, the base crashed off behind the stump. The trunk teetered and pivoted a trifle, then fell hard down in the direction I'd come, onto the semi-frozen dirt on the bank. It's tip was perhaps 40' from the river's edge, more or less pointing towards Vito. With both hands I ripped the base off the inclined bank and planted it on my left shoulder.

I ran off the incline, leaving the tip end where it was, but driving the meaty end around the tip, like the hands on a clock face. I ran like that into the water, the dead tree in one piece. I prayed it would be buoyant as well as long and strong enough to do what I was going to demand of it. In five or six strides I felt the bottom sloping away, and realized that I wasn't wearing the safety belt on my waders. Too late. I waded in and the shock of the freezing water pouring into the waders is something I'll not try to describe. All I knew is that if I didn't get to them, and get them as well as me back, I was going to probably join them before all three us drowned. A man cannot function in that kind of cold after a very short while. Physiologically speaking, I guess one could say that the body unintentionally kills itself trying to save itself while in the throes of hypothermia.

As I swam out through the jagged chunks and sheets of broken ice in the water, I screamed as I watched Vito slip under a third time. I knew that if I didn't get to him in the next ten seconds or so, he was dunzo. His eyes were not his own anymore. I don't think he had an exact idea of where he even was. He came up coughing, and splashing his grip hand, groaning and sucking wind and water. In the other, he had a piece of Oz. A few seconds later, the tip of the tree reached him. He reached out for it, and I saw him try to grip the end, but saw that he couldn't. He was frozen, and his hand no longer had the ability to hold on tight enough for me to drag the weight of both he and Oz.

I screamed one last set of things to him as I pushed another foot out: the first was, let go of Oz. The second was for him to pin the top of the tree between his arm and his body, under his armpit, and if possible to do the same with Oz. Those were the last words I was able to manage, as at that moment, with much sadness and disbelief, I discovered I couldn't determine if my legs were moving or not, but that I was all of a sudden gasping for air and floating much lower in the water than just seconds ago. Well, it's a wee bit fuzzy, but the next thing I was doing was dragging Vito out of the water. He'd made it into the shallows waist deep, but was unable to stand, and fell face down into the water again. I distinctly remember seeing Oz dropping the duck in only a few inches of water right at the bank, and attempt to shake. He got half a turn in before he too collapsed in the water sideways as if he'd been shot in the head.He literally keeled over.

It took me 20 minutes to get myself, Vito and Oz back to the truck. I almost didn't make it in the truck at all, and I had to throw Oz in the bed, after falling more than once and dropping oz in the snow . Vito, after a solid minute using both hands finally managed to turn the key that was left in the ignition. I was unable to get the ten odd gallons of ice water out of my waders, as I was walkihng frankenstein-like, stiff legged, throwing my hips forward. That was the only way I could walk, as I could no longer feel my legs. I stood on the side step, as I couldn't get my body into the seat. Well, five minutes later, we arrived at the house, banged up, acting like we were very drunk and definitely freaked out, but alive. We'd left our guns, gear, everything where they were, so I asked Vito's sons later to grab the gear when I could talk a couple hours later. And make sure you guys grab the ducks, of course. A shared bottle of stiff brandy, a hot tub and silence, we changed and said we'd talk later. He hugged me and I hugged him back. We shook hands and I told him if he ever did that again for a dog he was on his own. With what was barely a whisper, he looked me in the eyes and thanked me for saving his dog's life, and his.

I stopped in the basement to scratch Oz's bum, then slapped him upside the head, with me shaking mine. The wagging of his tail showed beneath the blankets he'd been wrapped in. I smirked and I hobbled into the truck and got headed home. I told Mrs. KG that the honey-dos were going to have to wait. She said she'd let me slide.

Quite the story there Leighton.

You'll get no guff from me.

Geno

Thanks, Geno.

Couple pics from that day.

Brrrr!

Dogs are special.

Can't say they're that special.............also can't say they're not.

Have had a scary moment or three with a few of mine. Not in ice like that, but on steep beaches on the Pacific.

And the little bulldog/Lab cross that sank like a stone.

Again, thanks for the story.

Geno