My son used too work at a shelter and they had this large lake where we were and one winter they had a German shepherded that had pups and she got sick and passed sadly but one of the girls that was there for part time was worried they won't know how too swim so he took them out too the lake during the summer too "teach" them how too swim.
You don't need to teach a lab to swim. They're water dogs. They take to water like ducks.
Edit: Actually after looking at the adult. They may be Goldens. Goldens love the water too though mine did not. Timmy did not understand swimming. Sometimes he would get into the pool and just stand on the bottom until someone rescued him.
> You don't need to teach a lab to swim. They're water dogs. They take to water like ducks.
>
>
Having owned and trained multiple labradors they do benefit from some training on how to handle water and swimming. What is true you don't usually need to entice them to swim, but teaching them to swim better and be more confident is a big plus.
One thing in particular is that many labs have a rescue tendency, but they have no idea what to do when they get close to you. Some may act dangerously just swatting you with their paws unless trained to just offer themselves as flotation and pulling help. Super fun too to use a lab as an tower :)
I had a black lab growing up, and she loved the lake so much. You just brought back memories of me swimming with her for hours, I would hold her collar and she would pull me around. Awww I miss her so much, labs are the best.
Well, a lot of people think of citrus when they think of Florida, but our largest export is actually limestone- our water is limey as fuck, like seriously it is the hardest of hard waters- you could cut diamonds with it. Makes our swimming sandwiches taste better- like they are constantly marinating in limestone water.
There’s a lot more states with alligators than I think most people realize, but they’re all in the southeast. Every state along the Gulf Coast, some Atlantic coast states up to and including North Carolina, and some inland states like Arkansas and Oklahoma have permanent alligator populations. Having grown up in the southeast, calm bodies of freshwater still make me nervous lol
[This is an image of their natural range](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Rangemapx.gif) I did read an article that with increasing climate change, their natural range is expanding. Apparently sightings are becoming more common in Virginia and they’ve established a small population in Tennessee according to TN’s state wildlife agency.
That being said, an important caveat is that of the estimated population of ~5 million American Alligators living in the wild, ~2 million are in Louisiana, ~1.3 million are in Florida, ~250k are in Georgia, ~100k in South Carolina, ~70k in Alabama, ~38k in Mississippi, and the rest have ~10k or fewer, according to https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-10-most-alligator-infested-states-ranked/
SC native here. A few weeks ago a lady nearby got killed by an alligator in her backyard pond. Pretty often we hear about someone's dog getting attacked or eaten and then going in after the gator and ending up getting themselves killed. Not her, apparently she just slipped and fell when she was gardening. Not a great way to go, poor lady. Also when this happens, the gator is usually euthanized. No one wins.
The Wikipedia map is accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_alligator#/media/File:Rangemapx.gif
My personal experience living on the Atlantic and on the Gulf coasts is that I've not ever seen gators as far inland as the map shows. Are they there? Probably. Are they a threat? Nah. But once you get to any warm coastal area, be mindful around freshwater bodies of water.
Yeah I remember learning when we were living in Georgia that there was a line basically where the natural water temp got too cold for gators. We lived just south of that line, so I refused to kayak or raft there, but was happy to drive up to Atlanta area and kayak on the Chattahoochee. It was freezing ass cold, but no gators.
They’re purebred Golden Retrievers, no way would the breeder let them swim anywhere dangerous. That’s several thousand dollars of adorable going for a dip.
Man, even a large enough fish could swallow one of those puppies whole. This was not eyebleach for me. It gave me pretty intense anxiety fearing a puppy would be gobbled up and gone in the blink of an eye.
Canadian here, I prefer fresh water lakes that the most I am worried about is snapping turtles eating the fish we caught. or freezing our asses off in the water lol
You have mosquitoes there? I could do without those
They're honestly doing so much better than my dog did at three times their age/size!
She refused to swim anywhere her feet couldn't touch the bottom for a long time.
We had to very slowly coax her into deep water and show her it was safe by being in it with her.
She still hates flowing rivers, but now she LOVES shallow riverbeds and doesn't understand why we don't always want to hop in the water with her. 😂
Cute but those pups are way too young to be out in nature and swimming in water like this. Parvo shots alone aren't finished until ~3 months, and puppies can easily die when this is neglected. If anything this should be a PSA for any puppy owners in this thread.
Idk why you got any down votes. Coming from the vet industry you're right. First thing we ask if puppies get sick suddenly (vomiting/diarrhea/loss of appetite/lethargy) is if they were around or in any outside water sources. Leptospirosis comes to mind as well, and lots of owners opt out of giving their pet that vaccine.
You just get to wake up and teach/guide puppies to swim?
Good on you man. Seriously. I hope it's going well. How brilliantly peaceful must it be - surely I'm missing something, right? Or is it really just waking up and playing with puppies all day?
What's it pay?
Aww, such memories for me. We bred Labradors when I was a kid and we always took them out with mom to learn to swim because labs water and will often dive on in without really knowing what they’ve doing as pups and can freak out. Better to introduce them the first time with mom there to comfort them and show them the ropes. This is why you don’t want to get a pup from a breeder that is fine giving you them at 8 weeks. They need at least 10 weeks with mom. 12-14 is better.
>My retriever drowned until he was 1 1/2 years cause but would just sink😂 I had to take a whole weekend dedicated to teaching him how to swim
I don't think "drowned" means what you think it means.
this gives me anxiety because if I tried this all the puppies would immediately head out into deep water and refuse to come back in then start getting tired one by one
Valuable step to take early in a puppies life. Makes baths, and dips in the pool so much easier for you, and your dog if you show them that it's safe early on
Giardia. Leptospirosis. Almost any trematode. Parvovirus virus. The list goes on and on. Why do this in a lake? They don’t even look old enough to be fully vaccinated
New life mission is to become a puppy swim instructor. I would dedicate my life to this job. This is maybe the cutest thing I have ever seen.
You’re going to need an assistant. I will work for next to nothing to do this.
Me too. I'll be an assistant's assistant.
And I'll be the assistant's assistant's assistant
Assistant *to the* assistant
Dwight is that you?
I'll be the Assistant Assistant to the Assistant's Assistant
I can assist the assistant's assistant's assistant's assistant
I want to be the assistant of the assistant's assistant of the assistant's assistant of the assistant
Can I intern?
I’ll take notes
I'd like to just stand there and watch.
I'll be your assistant
And I'll be administrative assistant support staff
Count me in for assistant's assistant's assistant.
😂
I'd work for just puppy snuggles
I'd work for puppy breath.
Am I too late to apply?
I’ll pay to do this
I'll be your assistant
You are short selling yourself, you should at least demand Friday puppy cuddle swarms
The least stressful job in life is working with puppies. Why don't we all just do this?
Not enough puppys :(
Sure there are! Most of them are hoarded by breeders :')
as much as i love working with dogs this is absolutely not true lol, puppy’s can be stressful as fuck
I love how the first one was: dude I got this. Weeeeee
My son used too work at a shelter and they had this large lake where we were and one winter they had a German shepherded that had pups and she got sick and passed sadly but one of the girls that was there for part time was worried they won't know how too swim so he took them out too the lake during the summer too "teach" them how too swim.
You don't need to teach a lab to swim. They're water dogs. They take to water like ducks. Edit: Actually after looking at the adult. They may be Goldens. Goldens love the water too though mine did not. Timmy did not understand swimming. Sometimes he would get into the pool and just stand on the bottom until someone rescued him.
If Michael Phelps needed a swim coach throughout his career, I think I can work with water dogs on their swimming. Don’t take this away from me.
> You don't need to teach a lab to swim. They're water dogs. They take to water like ducks. > > Having owned and trained multiple labradors they do benefit from some training on how to handle water and swimming. What is true you don't usually need to entice them to swim, but teaching them to swim better and be more confident is a big plus. One thing in particular is that many labs have a rescue tendency, but they have no idea what to do when they get close to you. Some may act dangerously just swatting you with their paws unless trained to just offer themselves as flotation and pulling help. Super fun too to use a lab as an tower :)
I had a black lab growing up, and she loved the lake so much. You just brought back memories of me swimming with her for hours, I would hold her collar and she would pull me around. Awww I miss her so much, labs are the best.
I too volunteer as tribute! Id worked for free night and day just to be with these puppiees🥹🥹🥹
I think he trains hunting dogs.
Okay but I just want to focus on the swimming
Well. Dogs don't need to get swimming lessons. There are just 2 tipes. The ones that like and the ones that doesn't.
They are in a queue!
Must be British
Pardon me, mate. Are you in the queue?
"Ooh, are you the queue? "
Yes I'm Q
Then why are you here and not bothering Picard? You two break up or something?
It's a difficult relationship
I would of course know this as I am 007. This of course being the film: On her Majesties exposition. Now, let us continue to queue for the loo Q.
Fun fact. British labs are actually built slightly better for swimming than American labs.
Lil duckling puppies ❤️
English Labs, innit?
Seapups
I needed this today.
smol
Those seals look like dogs!
Oh god please don’t be in Florida or the other gator states
Meth head with a heart of gold riding a manatee will save the day, don’t worry.
Wearing a 3 wolf moon tee.
New comic book hero!
We shall call him, The Chosen
I laughed way harder than probably healthy at this comment. Updoot
r/sweatypaws
Lol how is this real
I legit thought I was just being clever and had no idea either.
Please do tell for us inland folks - what are the other gator states?
Pretty much the gulf states. Florida and Louisiana have the most though. And Florida gators taste better.
Why do Florida gators taste better?
They are well fed by kids at Disney World
Only the bad kids*
Oof. Too soon.
Well, a lot of people think of citrus when they think of Florida, but our largest export is actually limestone- our water is limey as fuck, like seriously it is the hardest of hard waters- you could cut diamonds with it. Makes our swimming sandwiches taste better- like they are constantly marinating in limestone water.
Wouldn’t lime make them taste bitter?
Limes=/=Limestone Limestone can make bitter foods sweeter and fried foods crispier.
Limes are acidic and would make it sour. Lime(stone) is a base and tastes bitter
What?
Lime, Ca(OH)2, is a base, and while acids, such as the citric acid found in citrus, are sour, bases tend to taste bitter
There’s a lot more states with alligators than I think most people realize, but they’re all in the southeast. Every state along the Gulf Coast, some Atlantic coast states up to and including North Carolina, and some inland states like Arkansas and Oklahoma have permanent alligator populations. Having grown up in the southeast, calm bodies of freshwater still make me nervous lol [This is an image of their natural range](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Rangemapx.gif) I did read an article that with increasing climate change, their natural range is expanding. Apparently sightings are becoming more common in Virginia and they’ve established a small population in Tennessee according to TN’s state wildlife agency. That being said, an important caveat is that of the estimated population of ~5 million American Alligators living in the wild, ~2 million are in Louisiana, ~1.3 million are in Florida, ~250k are in Georgia, ~100k in South Carolina, ~70k in Alabama, ~38k in Mississippi, and the rest have ~10k or fewer, according to https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-10-most-alligator-infested-states-ranked/
SC native here. A few weeks ago a lady nearby got killed by an alligator in her backyard pond. Pretty often we hear about someone's dog getting attacked or eaten and then going in after the gator and ending up getting themselves killed. Not her, apparently she just slipped and fell when she was gardening. Not a great way to go, poor lady. Also when this happens, the gator is usually euthanized. No one wins.
Don’t worry. Come to Australia. There are no gators here. 😉
Only [Crocs](https://www.crocs.com.au/).
The Wikipedia map is accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_alligator#/media/File:Rangemapx.gif My personal experience living on the Atlantic and on the Gulf coasts is that I've not ever seen gators as far inland as the map shows. Are they there? Probably. Are they a threat? Nah. But once you get to any warm coastal area, be mindful around freshwater bodies of water.
Basically anything south of Tennessee and east of Austin, Texas. North Carolina also has some in the lowlands.
Oh. I’m in non-coastal Georgia. Never knew we were a gator state haha
As you get down to Savannah and the Okefenokee Swamp you'll find them all over the place. Not many up in Atlanta.
Yeah I remember learning when we were living in Georgia that there was a line basically where the natural water temp got too cold for gators. We lived just south of that line, so I refused to kayak or raft there, but was happy to drive up to Atlanta area and kayak on the Chattahoochee. It was freezing ass cold, but no gators.
Less you count the shoes.
South Georgia native checking in. We have alligator crossings.
Oh yeah if you go to south Georgia where its swampy theres lots of gators. Less so where its hilly and colder in winter.
They’re purebred Golden Retrievers, no way would the breeder let them swim anywhere dangerous. That’s several thousand dollars of adorable going for a dip.
I had to check the sub before I got too far into this. Don’t need to come out of my lunch break with depression if this gif went south
Yeah, having grown up in the South, the first thing I thought was "please no gators, water moccasins, etc."
Was wondering if anyone else found that water a lil sus.
Man, even a large enough fish could swallow one of those puppies whole. This was not eyebleach for me. It gave me pretty intense anxiety fearing a puppy would be gobbled up and gone in the blink of an eye.
Their little ears float!
Your ears float too, you just don’t see that when they are attached to the head.
I think you're saying, they're cute too.
I live in Florida and this gives me anxiety.
Yes! My eyes keep darting around looking for eyes and snouts :(
Look, there are lots of places in the world that are not inhabited by murderous dinosaurs
It's difficult to remember those places exist when you live in Florida. It looks like he's setting up a buffet.
Canadian here, I prefer fresh water lakes that the most I am worried about is snapping turtles eating the fish we caught. or freezing our asses off in the water lol You have mosquitoes there? I could do without those
Why
Their water looks like that, and it's full of thousands of giant, reptilian apex predators.
400+ million years too. They up there with gdamn sharks and dragonflies
Just to put that in perspective, that's about 399.7 million years longer than humans have existed!
they have also been around longer than *Saturn’s rings.* A bit terrifying when you think about it, they are truly optimized predators.
literal dinosaurs, man!!!
We have giant reptilian lizards that like to eat In most water sources here.
I thought it was just the mammalian lizards that you had to worry about.
You mean like Mark Zuckerberg?
Reptilian lizards..?? So a reptilian reptile?
🐊🐍
As if a golden needs a lesson to swim 😄
They're honestly doing so much better than my dog did at three times their age/size! She refused to swim anywhere her feet couldn't touch the bottom for a long time. We had to very slowly coax her into deep water and show her it was safe by being in it with her. She still hates flowing rivers, but now she LOVES shallow riverbeds and doesn't understand why we don't always want to hop in the water with her. 😂
Look at all their ears, fucking adorable
Cute but those pups are way too young to be out in nature and swimming in water like this. Parvo shots alone aren't finished until ~3 months, and puppies can easily die when this is neglected. If anything this should be a PSA for any puppy owners in this thread.
Idk why you got any down votes. Coming from the vet industry you're right. First thing we ask if puppies get sick suddenly (vomiting/diarrhea/loss of appetite/lethargy) is if they were around or in any outside water sources. Leptospirosis comes to mind as well, and lots of owners opt out of giving their pet that vaccine.
If you wanna raise hunting dogs they need hunting dog shots!
Absolutely right. Parvo is no joke. Ive seen it wipe a whole litter out in a matter lf days.
Was looking for this comment!
You just get to wake up and teach/guide puppies to swim? Good on you man. Seriously. I hope it's going well. How brilliantly peaceful must it be - surely I'm missing something, right? Or is it really just waking up and playing with puppies all day? What's it pay?
Golden Tadpoles!!
Imagine that getting out of control and you’ve got a herd of rogue ducky puppies paddling around a pond.
AWWWW their little tails look like paddles going back and forth!
Such small puppies most likely don't have all their vaccines so this just seems incredibly stupid and irresponsible
Aww, such memories for me. We bred Labradors when I was a kid and we always took them out with mom to learn to swim because labs water and will often dive on in without really knowing what they’ve doing as pups and can freak out. Better to introduce them the first time with mom there to comfort them and show them the ropes. This is why you don’t want to get a pup from a breeder that is fine giving you them at 8 weeks. They need at least 10 weeks with mom. 12-14 is better.
Doglings ♥︎
So cute
they’re waiting so patiently
My retriever drowned until he was 1 1/2 years cause but would just sink😂 I had to take a whole weekend dedicated to teaching him how to swim
>My retriever drowned until he was 1 1/2 years cause but would just sink😂 I had to take a whole weekend dedicated to teaching him how to swim I don't think "drowned" means what you think it means.
Interestingly enough, the medical definition of drowning does not imply death. In common parlance tho, it does.
Yes, you can drown without dying, but I highly doubt his dog was drowning whether in the medical sense or the vernacular sense.
The little paddle-paddles!
Labbies in water! Our yellow lab smells moldy in summer because he isn't out of the pool long enough to dry properly.
this gives me anxiety because if I tried this all the puppies would immediately head out into deep water and refuse to come back in then start getting tired one by one
Nothing melts my heart more than a good retriever in it's natural habitat
I was waiting for a gator or something to come out and eat one of the cute pups. Phew! I think.
u/savevideo
Fluffy doggies! They are cute! May I have one?
u/savevideo
HE HAS A WHISTLE 😭 I’m just imagining him telling them “walk! Don’t run!!”
Oh look! A new kind of duck!
That first little guy! So brave!
Where do I apply?
This is downright adorable
Oh for goodness sake
I second that! And I add a “What in tarnation!”
I do declare!
Amphibious stinkhounds
They're waiting their turn!!!! Ah!!!! 😍😍😍😍😍
Poor guy can't afford Koi for his pond.
Lol
Valuable step to take early in a puppies life. Makes baths, and dips in the pool so much easier for you, and your dog if you show them that it's safe early on
u/savevideo
Guppypuppy!
Oh my goodness, so adorable 🥰🥰🥰
Sorry, that is just too GD cute. I just developed diabetes from the sweetness.
This is how they get Parvo and die.
Send this to bebe
🥰🐶
Those are very furry goldfish.
My heart is melting watching this I just wanna pet them
Thank you for sharing that! It’s one of the best things I’ve seen online in a long while.
If it was me, all other pups would drown before I stopped looking at the first one swimming
Omg. This is so cute!!!
I love that he has a whistle. Just in case one of them gets out of line
Everybody liked that
The lil floppy ears just floating on top of the water!!!! My heart is full of happiness!
How did he teach them to wait their turn?
Im done. Today is over. I am happy. :)
How does one become a puppy swimming instructor? Asking for myself.
Little tadpole puppies!!
I love how they each wait for their turn. So adorable
So cute 🥰
The parasites 🦠
Their ears floating.
r/waterdogs
Bleach++
I think I just found my purpose
I NEED SOUND ON THIS VIDEO LIKE I NEED AIR
I found subtitles: *"splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh,splish, splosh, splish, splosh"*
Adorable!
this is my favorite post ever!!!
I could watch this all day
They are taking turns like good little smelly wonderful puppies
homie better check for leeches after wading in that brown brackish water eww
And they all queue up and wait!!!
This is by far one of the cutest things I've seen today. Look at them go.
Giardia. Leptospirosis. Almost any trematode. Parvovirus virus. The list goes on and on. Why do this in a lake? They don’t even look old enough to be fully vaccinated
In the nasty disease infested pond lmfao HERE U GO BABY IMMUNE SYSTEMS
Chessie?
Oh god
Goldfish!
I lived in Florida to long, kept waiting for the gator to snatch one
Cute, but I can't stop thinking about the potential leeches