**This post was originlly published January 29, 2009 and has been updated for this Chessie Week**
I haven’t really written about my particular breed yet, so I’ll share a little skinny on Chesapeake Bay Retrievers.
We love to swim and are known for something called “water freaking.” Any water that’s deep enough will do for swimming in circles, while splashing with our paws, snapping at the splash, and yipping with rowdy abandon! And if you call us while we’re freaking, it’s like we’re plugging our ears and saying “Lalalalalala-I can’t hear you-lalalalalala.”
Chessies can adopt this behavior as a bad habit, if humans don’t nip it in the bud. Sometimes there’s a gap between us learning to swim and finishing our basic training. That could be big trouble time. The solution is to tap into our retrieving work ethic. If we’ve got something to accomplish in the water, chances are we won’t freak. If you wait too long to give us a task like retrieving, we’ll use our independent Chessie minds and think up our freaky-deaky.
Bottom line, we need exercise, as all dogs do, for both of our mental well-being. Chessies have been bred to need activity more than some other breeds, so you have to get up and get out with us. Swimming is a great way to exhaust us into the sweet doggie oblivion of laying on your bed and woofing in our sleep. Don’t be afraid of the freaking. If it happens, there is no magic spell to snap us back to reality. Patience, my human, is all you need. And love.
I just encountered water-freaking with a newly adopted Chessie — I had had two of them in the past, but neither one got so over-amped in the water. So now we start an obedience-and-de-sensitization program.
I’m bookmarking your blog.
Just read your blog post… it can be quite unnerving the way a Chessie can lose his/her mind in the water. Your breeder’s on the right track with having your dog work in the water, as opposed to playing. Keep me updated on your progress.
[...] is a special trait we Chessies are known for called Freaking, which I’ve written about here. Freaking happens when we aren’t given a task to accomplish in the water. We will yip and [...]