Meet the giant fluffy dogs being trained in water rescue

NationalWorld.com

This adorable breed are used in some coastal towns to rescue people who are drowning.  Brooke Schofield, a trainer with the Blackpool Working Newfoundlands, explains some of the training they do with these incredible water dogs.

Transcript

00:00 Newfoundlands are working dogs and they historically were used by fishermen in Canada to jump in,

00:07 help pulling the nets in when they were fishing and then they would use them for the land-based

00:11 activities for pulling carts to market to then sell the fish. So we basically re-enact those

00:17 types of activities. On the water side though with the training the dogs have got this natural

00:22 ability to want to help people in the water. We help them get the confidence in the water

00:27 and then do all sorts of activities such as swimming out to people, towing them back for

00:33 rescue, swimming out to boats, taking a rope, towing a boat back to rescue.

00:37 So we start off with the obedience work in the ring so that obviously gives you the

00:44 the relationship with your dog to be able to give them the commands to do left and right turns,

00:49 to do stays, downs, waits and that builds up to when you actually start attaching the cart so

00:54 you can tow the cart safely. And you go on things like they're called a haul where you have a cart

00:58 that's weighted with different weights, different objects and you go on sort of like a mile to two

01:03 mile hauls where you're taking the dog pulling the cart and you have to get all over different

01:07 obstacles like get through gates so obviously the dog has to stand and wait safely while you go and

01:12 open the gate pull through and then close the gate afterwards. It's like having two miniature

01:16 ponies coming and inviting to live with you so there's a lot of work involved and a lot of mess

01:21 but also a lot of love, they're the most loving dogs. A lot of slobber. Yeah that's something that

01:26 just becomes, it just disappears, we like to call it newfie glitter, it sounds a little bit better

01:30 than the slobber. Very good, very good.

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