The boys are gearing up for Wassertest!

So we had an EXTREMELY cold and rainy May. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for the dogs to go swimming since the river was super high and super fast. We were in Central Switzerland visiting Simon's parents last night and decided to take advantage of the fantastic weather today to explore some spots on the lake for Wassertest (Water test) training. Simon's father suggested a little part of the lake near a swimming area and nature reserve, but not in either. The water is fairly shallow, so Simon and I could easily go in about calf/waist deep and get the dogs if they were in trouble.

Not a bad view, eh? I think we will be coming back for more practice in July.

 One of our problems with Freddie and water retrieving was always that if the toy wasn't interesting enough and went too far in, then pffft, forget it. The toy was gone. We have lost several floaty toys due to our hard headed, brown dackel. I saw this wonderful idea on http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/ a while back, but I currently can't find the post! Basically, one of the dog owners tied feathers to a floaty toy in order to make it more interesting for the dogs. Since we had 2 frozen ducks in the house, I thought I'd give it a try. We took a wing off of one of the ducks and tied it to the dog's orange floaty. Man! You would think it was Christmas!

I love swimming dackels! They look like otters.

Baxter easily went into the water for a few short and progressively longer swims. He did a couple ~8 meter retrieves before getting tired. Swimming is new exercise for him and although he loves it, he seems to get a bit tired after a while and gets a more nervous about the longer swims. I'm not positive if he really is tired, but this is what it seems like. Not wanting to have a negative experience, we kept the remainder of the swims shorter (max 4-5 m) and provided a LOT of praise. I know he would have gone in for the toy without the wing, but this really helped with the prey drive.

Our big surprise came in our water hating brown dog! I've mentioned several times that Freddie is NOT a water dog. He goes chest deep and then does a lot of thinking, seeming to weigh his options in order to decide if he really needs whatever it is that's in the water. We were planning that our practice today would be just for Baxter, but nope! Low and behold Freddie's amazing hunting drive turned on and that one duck wing was more than enough to make the orange floaty worth saving!

Freddie jumped in in front of Baxter on a long swim...

and the boys brought in the toy together!

close up of the long swim

Here you can see the distance a bit better. The other shore was ~25m (70+ feet away)

There was a sand bar, so some of the time Freddie was able to "hop" his way along for about 4 m before swimming. Baxter, being shorter, had to swim more. Regardless, both dogs did fantastic! It was a great surprise and now I'm hoping that we'll be able to sign these 2 up for Wassertest with the SDC this August. Now both boys are pretty tired from their morning swim. The ducks are ready and waiting, all we need is a bit of time. :)