Lottie's Diary - training diary of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever

At our first trip to the local public lake, a popular place with dog walkers, I could see that Lottie was quite overawed by the strange sounds and smells. Even though she has met a lot of people in her short life, it has always been from the safety of my arms or in her own garden, or the privacy of our shoot grounds.

The first dog we allowed to approach her was a large and friendly Labrador. As soon as he touched her Lottie screamed with fear and the poor dog and his owner - who for one terrible moment thought her lovely lab had bitten my puppy, looked on in horror. The nice dog was happy to have another try and from the safety of my lap, Lottie tentatively made friends.

Unusually for her Lottie did not seem very interested in the dummy, so I teased her with it for a bit then restrained her while I sent Meg in. This was too much for Lottie to bear and without a second thought she went straight in for the next dummy. I hadn't thrown the dummy very far and the water wasn't quite deep enough for her to swim. The next throw was just a little further out, and without any further fuss Lottie was swimming as though she had been doing it all her life. A couple more for Meg whilst I held Lottie and I threw a final one for the pup. She swam nice and low in the water with no splashing. What a successful and useful outing.

"now this is what I call fun"

Lottie quickly accepted the different dogs she met

Within the hour, Lottie had accepted this new change in her life, and after another five or six friendly 'strange dog encounters' was taking everything in her stride. This amazing ability of puppies to adapt to strange situations is very short lived, just another week or two later and it could have been very different. Introductions completed, we were then able to turn our attention to the water

The ponds on our shoot are in a terrible state due to the drought but this bigger lake is still reasonably full and free of scum and algae. During our visit Lottie had watched a lot of dogs fetching sticks and balls from the lake with great interest. We managed to find a shelving area away from too many people and I went into the shallows with my cocker Meg, and encouraged Lottie in with us. The narrow shelving area was ideal as it would allow me to intercept Lottie on her way out of the water should she decide to retrieve the dummy Comforted by Meg's presence she waded in up to her chest then climbed in and out again a few times.

Our sit lessons are going very well and Lottie walks nicely on the lead now. I am still putting her on a check cord in the meadow, but have not had need of it as her recall has been excellent. She keeps very close to me most of the time, without being clingy, and we are building up a really nice friendship.

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