Quest Falls into the Pool When Helping Me on a Dog Behavior Session

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While Quest is my personal dog, I adopted him with the intention of having him help me rehabilitate dogs.

The original plan was to take a year or so to train and socialize Quest before he started joining me as I work with other dogs. But shortly after bringing him home, I had a client with a dog that wasn’t properly socialized as a puppy so I decided to call Quest up early.

My dog behavior client was Coco a two-year-old baby Faced Maltese who was pretty high energy. But due to being so small and not a lot of socialization experience, the options to socialize her were limited.

Fortunately I had a Dalmatian pup who was so young he was Maltese size!

Coco wasn’t initially very receptive to Quest, but he did motivate her. Coco preferred to stay with her guardians and not leave the deck unless the humans came out with her. Well she changed that tune once Quest walked through the door to the deck.

The visit took an unexpected turn when Quest was chasing after Coco around the pool in the back yard. On one lap he misjudged the corner and accidentally fell into the pool.

Coincidentally, while doing some research on dog behavior a month or two ago I ran across a case study where a Dalmatian pup was staying at an unknown home and accidentally fell into the pool due to it being dark out.

The guardian was a dog trainer and knew that making a big alarming deal out of things could have a long lasting impact on the pup. So she laid down on the ground next to the pool and calmly called the puppy over to the side of the pool.

So when Quest fell into the pool, I took a knee at the edge and called his name in a calm voice once he pooped up from under water. He swam right over to me, I fished him out of the pool, gave him a pat on the but and off he went looking for Coco.

As you can see in this video that I took immediately afterword, the experience didnt linger with him or cause him any fear of trepidation. The only thing that happened was he got wet and my puppy learned to swim earlier than planned.

It was great seeing how Quest recovered almost immediately. We will come back to puppy swimming in another post, but a little early practice never hurts.

Puppies are apt to stumble and fall as you raise them. Its not about the fall. How you react and help them get back on their feet is what matters most.

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