Alligator Water Entry

Both Lumi and Laddie had problems on and off with water returns. It has perhaps been our single greatest training challenge, and this post is not on that general topic.

But Laddie had another problem that made his training even more difficulty, so I thought I'd highlight that problem here.

Laddie had no trouble with water entries during his first few months, but around the age of a year old, he suddenly became unable to enter water while carrying a retrieval article (training dummy or duck, for example). In a 4Q dog, the problem might have been masked by an ecollar-trained recall, but for Laddie, it became a major barrier.

In fact, it took weeks before I even realized what the problem was. For a long time, I thought it was simply a recall problem. But actually, Laddie had developed a phobia about the water entry itself.

I'm guessing that these were the steps that led to the problem:

1. Like most puppies, Laddie was uncomfortable from the beginning at crossing what I call the "swim-line", the transition when wading out when the dog is no longer able to touch bottom and must begin to swim.
2. Also like some puppies, Laddie apparently came to a solution: He would leap over the swim line as he entered the water. At the time, I thought it was exuberance, and it is a joy to watch. But I now believe that it was also an avoidance behavior.
3. That worked fine until one day Laddie must have been carrying an article in his mouth when he made one of those leaps, and it hurt. I'd guess it must have hurt quite bad because of the effect it had on him, or it must happened several times. I was not aware of the incidents at the time they happened, I only speculate that they occurred.
4. As a result, Laddie became afraid of those leaping water entries. But he had never learned to "alligator" into the water, simply pushing off when he reached the swimline. And his recall was not strong enough to pull him back to me despite the phobia.

[more to be added, on how I addressed the problem and how I'd avoid it in future]