It seems that I have to put my dog training hat on again. Last year I beat my head against the wall trying to get Kate to retrieve reliably to hand, so I forked over the $$ and she went away to school for a few months.
Today she went into the pond to chase a pair of geese off of it, and after the geese flew away on the way back she noticed the Pintail decoy that I have marking the diffuser in the deepest part of the pond.
She veered off course a slight bit, grabbed it and kept on swimming. her progress was halted by the 5/16" nylon rope that was tied to the weighted diffuser. She tried for at least 5 minutes to bring the bird (decoy) to shore, doing a dog paddle in one spot. No matter what I did could I get her to let go of the decoy.
So, it was run for the boat and oars. Drag the boat 50 yds to the pond, shove it in and row out to her. She was still trying to swim for shore when I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and hauled her into the boat. I couldn't yell at her for doing what she was trained to do, but I will have to work on "No, leave it" or "No bird" when it gets a bit nicer out.
I'll bet she was in the 40°F water for 10 mnutes total, and was shivering in the boat before we made it to shore.
