I'm sitting here working tonight soaked to the knees. Skipper and I went down to Lake Washington and he retrieved the ball out of the water for a while. He was a little hesitant at first, there were waves from the boat wakes breaking on the small beach where we go, but he wanted the ball, so he snatched it up from near the shore.
We had only been there about 10 minutes when a man came along with his lab and played fetch with his dog. Skipper promptly decided that if that dog could do it so could he. Actually Skipper did a better job than the lab. The lab kept leaving his ball floating and trying to take Skipper's. Skipper could actually swim faster and would overtake the other dog and take his ball out of the older dog's mouth! The other owner was getting a little frustrated. I thought about leaving, but decided that both dogs needed practice working with distractions.
After about 20 minutes I took Skipper up to the car, switched to a regular leash (I work him on a 20' rope in the water - it floats and I just let it go, but I can step on it when he comes out if he doesn't come directly back to me). Then we took a very slow walk along the waterfront. He does "heel" pretty well in the street at home or in the field behind the house, but is having a terrible time where there are lots of people and dogs. There were plenty of both tonight. After a quarter of an hour he was paying better attention to me which was enough to ask. We'll go again soon.
