I'm not even close to being very knowledgeable on soils or what you need to hold water, but I did work construction for awhile with regards to compaction and getting dirt ready to build on.
A dozer is a terrible machine for compacting soil. It will do the job in good clay for a dam or pond, but if you really want it compacted and if your soil is marginal, then you need a sheepsfoot roller. Preferable one the vibrates and has pads on both the front and rear rollers.
Since your pond is almost empty and you are worried about it leaking again, I would probably look into renting one. They are super easy to operate, and in fact, are very boring except for how they wear you out from doing the same thing over and over again on top of the noise and vibration of the machine.
Most rental yards have them of different sizes. Be sure to get one that's big enough to ride on. The small walk behind models are too small for what you are doing. Not enough weight to really accomplish anything.
If the soil is marginal, compacting it will make it better. By design, dozers and their tracks are built to float across the soil, not sink into it. As a result, they do little in the way of compaction. For small jobs, I have used my backhoe with a load of dirt in the front bucket to compact the soil. This works on pads and my roads. Where the dozer goes across the soil, the backhoe has all the weight concentrated on the tires, and it sinks into the same soil the dozer has been over many times. My dozer weighs almost 40,000 pounds and my backhoe weighs 14,000 pounds. The difference is in how much weight that comes into contact with the soil. In this case, the backhoe has more weight contacting the soil then the dozer. In your case, the dozer is probably doing the exact same thing as my dozer does. It feels solid and to a certain degree it is, but it could be made more so with the proper tool.
Good luck.
Eddie
PS, from the look of your background, it looks like some good hunting there. Lots of corn for food and cover for shelter. Do you hunt and how did you do?
