Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2012 5:06 pm Post subject: Hooray - Bramble learns to swim.
We had the greatest time on Friday!!!
We'd booked a hydrotherapy pool play session for Bramble this week. He has always loved to play in water, but could never bring himself to swim, not even with the greatest encouragement and lots of other dogs around him. At the pool, we had a great session and by the end of it he was swimming with style. The owner of the pool was there and made us feel really welcome as well as helping to see Bramble had a safe learning experience.
We're definitely going again, not just to help further build his confidence and experience, but just because it's a great way to play.
There's a video here of him, showing the difference between how he was when we first entered the pool and would probably have done a runner if he could, to the point where he was just loving it. Seriously good fun.
He really didn't like the idea of swimming at all and being in there with him made all the difference. Luckily he does love to retrieve, so once we'd chipped away at his fear, his 'go fetch' instinct took over and made it playtime for him. I absolutely loved the bits where we were swimming together, it was an absolute blast - I hadn't ever pictured how great that was going to be.
goldiesgirl wrote:
Yay go Bramble Digger says now does he realise what he's missing!! Hope you're all well.
How's Bramble's training going? Digs is having a slight teenage rebellion on the retrieving front!
Hi Lauren, great to hear from you again, Digger is such a star. We also went the teenage rebellion route - he absolutely decided that delivery wasn't half as much fun as trying to get me to chase him. The walk away was becoming a long prospect, so I finally decided to go the trained retrieve route and rebuild that way - we seem now to be making progress and I hope soon to visit Laura at Stauntonvale again to restart our training. You didn't say where in the chain he'd decided to play, but I'm sure you and the wonderful Digger will soon be on the same page again.
What an awesome video,the bit where he holds on to your back was delightful.My Ted is a paddler and cant bring himself to jump in and swim,id love to take him swimming.Where did you go,im manchester way? x
Hi Lauren, great to hear from you again, Digger is such a star. We also went the teenage rebellion route - he absolutely decided that delivery wasn't half as much fun as trying to get me to chase him. The walk away was becoming a long prospect, so I finally decided to go the trained retrieve route and rebuild that way - we seem now to be making progress and I hope soon to visit Laura at Stauntonvale again to restart our training. You didn't say where in the chain he'd decided to play, but I'm sure you and the wonderful Digger will soon be on the same page again.
We're currently at the stage of if I call him in over the dummy then he picks and brings it in really nicely but if I send him out to it from beside me he picks, turns back towards me and then throws it round the field for 5 minutes before returning to me.
I've spoken to Di and have a rough plan of attack - I need to make it clear to him that coming back to me IS better than playing with it and at uni we're a lot closer to Di so we're managing group training and the odd 1 to 1 roughly once a month during term time which I think is working well for him
I think if I can suss this with him then we might progress a little. It's all babysteps at the moment.
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Hooray - Bramble learns to swim.
Digger says now does he realise what he's missing!! Hope you're all well.
