Well here I am Mason has been mine for about five weeks and he has become an incredible companion, I have taken him everywhere. Today we went to a park that is a couple miles away from my house. There are usually a lot of people and just as many dogs. We walked for a while and found our spot right by the water to stop and sniff around. While we were there a coule of ducks and a goose went swimming by, Mason stood at the edge of the water with his complete attention on the birds. Now because Mason is a puppy that lasted the typical puppy attention span, about 30 seconds. In that time, he wondered into the water not far but enough to get his feet wet. At that point I began to think of ways in which I could get him to go into the water. The first thing I thought was to pick him up and through him in the water, I know that is wrong in fact I hardly even finished the thought before I put it to rest. I noticed that Mason had been trying to get a stick that was laying in the grass so I got it for him and let him chew on it for a few moments. Then I took it from him and through it a few feet away from him because I wanted to figure out how motivated he would be to go get the stick. Sure enough he got up and got the stick. I also made it a point to make sure that I was in position to be directly in front of him so that I was there to take it right from his mouth.

So after my initial "test" I took the stick and tossed it in the water about two or three away from Mason into the water. He walked right into the water and grabbed the stick and then he turned around and walked to me, I took the stick from his mouth and praised him repeatedly. I gave him back the stick to chew on for a few seconds then took it from him again and through it in the water, a few feet further than the previous time and told Mason to fetch it, this time he went right in and grabbed the stick turned around, and brought it right to me. I repeated the same steps and each time the stick went out a little further and he retrieved it. Finally I through the stick out far enough where he would finally have to swim. Mason got out far enough and stopped he did not swim, he did not retrieve the stick, he came back to me with a dejected look on his face. I went and found another stick. then through the stick to a previous distance that he had retieved the stick. He went in to get the stick and retrieved it and brought it out of the water. When he retrieved it the last time he had that confident look on his face again, I knew then we had reached our limit and it was time to stop...