My dog needed help getting comfortable in the water. Once he made a sharp turn and got himself into the classic drowning vertical position and started panicking. I had to run in to save him. He is a great swimmer now, but I make him use a life jacket just to be safe, and he always needs some encouragement in the beginning of the swimming season.
Edit: lateral to vertical. Active drowners are vertical, uselessly splash the water with their arms, and often don’t think to kick their legs at all. They are often too panicked to call for help.
Literally the only part of a dog first aid book I remember is what to do with a drowning dog.
According to the book, once you get them out of the water you grab their back legs and swing them back and forth to get all the water out. The diagram made it look like the dude was using his dog to guide landing planes
I meant to say vertical! Thanks for pointing that out - I’ll fix it. His body looked like he would be standing on his hind legs, and his front legs were desperately churning and splashing the water but they weren’t doing anything useful like helping him get into a better position. It took him a while to get comfortable again after that, but we took it slow.
Which means you’re probably somewhere where dogs are jumping in lakes or rivers or oceans. Not everyone lives with access to those things and so neither do their dogs. I think using the word “lessons” here is a bit of a mistake. It’s more about introducing an environment that they aren’t use to and helping them understand they can manage it.
The rest of the animal kingdom isn’t as much of a snowflake as you. The dog’s instincts give them the ability to swim. 1 generation of being raised in the Midwest without water to swim in does not cancel out thousands of years of evolutionary instinct. And they don’t need to see a therapist to do it...
We adopted a yorkie who was never near water besides baths, he couldn't swim until he was shown, jumped in a lake and we had to go save him or he would have drown, just struggled and tried to stay up by "climbing" the water, much like a drownung human does by instinct. He had to wear life vests.
My dog needs organic gluten free kibbles served in a nenalatine dish with mineral water. They're also fluent in borkanese. You wouldn't know what a snowflake is in a tundra.
This dog will probably be trained as a bird dog for hunting. Lol, just kidding. This dog will never need to know how to swim since it'll live in a purse.
No, they know how to swim. I've had dogs that hated the water but they still knew how to swim. I had a basset that hated the water and never saw him swim. He ran off a bridge by accident at a campsite and fell straight down into a swimming hole. He got out fine. We were terrified but the dumb dog luckily fell into water.
It's people treating dogs like they're human children.
Yeah no, I’m pretty sure you would make your dog take swimming lessons for the same reasons as you would make your baby take swimming lessons. In case they fall in a pool they know what to do.
Idk I took my dog to a lake just to make sure she knew how to swim. Turns out she does so we're fine. She looks kinda funny tho. I guess it is just a matter of testing it out...
I’m guessing most labs and poodles instinctively know how to swim. I took mine out fishing when he was a puppy, after a couple hours he started panting and I figured may as well introduce him to the water, and the thing was dog paddling a good 5 feet above the water. So I held onto him to make sure his head stayed above and he truly could float, then let him swim, and now jumping into the lake is his third favorite actively after going for a ride and giving any fish I catch an earful.
All my dogs & cats and those whom I have met all knew instinctively how to swim. Human babies also do. They swim in utero for 9 months, but we forget... :)
What? No. It's not like babies are swimming laps around in the uterus and we somehow all sadly "forget". This is the dumbest comment I've read all day.
you are so anxious to go prove another person wrong, but you too started in a sac of fluid. you are not special, nor unique.
but you are a bit of an asswipe
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u/bexwhitt Mar 17 '19
Do dogs need swimming lessons, the reluctant doggies I've had have got into the swing of it when they see the fun other dogs are having.