Retrievers: Cold-Weather Considerations

A dear friend of mine—as experienced and conscientious a sportsman as I’ve ever known—lost his Drahthaar when she broke through the ice on a South Dakota pond. It happened in the blink of an eye, and while my friend did everything short of making his wife a widow while trying to save his dog, he couldn’t—and it haunted him for the rest of his life.

Hunting in bitterly cold conditions presents a specific set of dangers. Breaking through (or being trapped beneath) ice may be the most dire, but there’s also hypothermia, joint injuries, and many others. As dog owners, our responsibility is to anticipate these dangers and take the necessary steps to minimize risks.

It begins with knowing your dog’s capabilities relative to the conditions you’re likely to be hunting in. If you hunt with a Chesapeake Bay retriever, you’re going to have a broader horizon of cold-weather opportunities than if you hunt with a Boykin spaniel. There are differences in cold tolerance and swimming strength not only from breed to breed but from dog to dog. The bottom line is that you need to have a handle on where your dog falls on this spectrum and be able to recognize situations that might push him past his limits.

Perhaps the most hazardous retrieve a dog can be asked to make is one that requires him to climb onto shelf ice from open water. Montana waterfowler Bruce Posey, who favors big, powerful Labs precisely because of their prowess in handling harsh late-season conditions, advises breaking shelf ice up, if possible, so your dog doesn’t have to deal with it. If that’s not an option, he tries to determine how deep the water is at the ice’s edge. If he isn’t satisfied that the dog can use his hind legs to push off from the bottom to climb onto the ice, he looks for a different place to hunt.

“The dog’s safety is always the number one priority,” Posey stresses. “We hunt the Yellowstone River in temperatures as low as zero, but we always check the condition of the ice floes first. If they’re heavy, we walk away. If they’re light, we put neoprene vests on the dogs and hunt. The dogs’ coats are very dense by that point in the season; they’ll jump in the river, retrieve the bird, sit down beside you entirely encased in ice, and be completely unbothered. They just want another bird. But we’re not keeping them out in that kind of weather all day long—two or three hours, max. In the long run the cold takes a toll, especially on their joints and pads.”

The same principle of minimizing a dog’s exposure guides Posey’s approach to field shooting for geese. “When it’s 10 or 20 below,” he explains, “we don’t leave our vehicles until the birds start to fly. We’ve set our decoys, of course, and we’ve got a spot picked out—typically a ditch of some kind—to shoot from. The dogs have their neoprene vests on, and if there’s ice in the bottom of the ditch, we’ll bring a piece of carpet for them to sit on. Again, we’re not out there for more than a couple of hours—and when we’re done our dogs do not go in the back of a pickup. We towel them off well, and they either ride in their crates in the back of an SUV or directly in the back seat.”

Equipping your dog with a neoprene vest is a necessity for cold-weather and cold-water hunting. A vest provides insulation and buoyancy as well as protection from sticks, snags, and other pointy objects. You want your dog to accomplish his retrieves as quickly, safely, and efficiently as possible, and a vest will help him do that.

Another cold-weather hazard is the possibility of joint injuries posed by any uneven terrain that’s coated with ice. If it isn’t possible to avoid these hazards altogether, about all you can do, Posey says, is stay vigilant and try to steer your dog clear of them. It comes back to using good judgment and keeping your dog out of harm’s way—even if it means walking away.