"CG" wrote in message
om...
Hello. I'm new to canoeing and would like to train my dog to come
along. ...

Keno was a malamute who came along on all my trips for years. Main problem
was that he HATED to get wet. I had to lure him into the boat with dog
biscuits, and the timing had to be perfect. If I gave the biscuit to him
before we were well clear of shore, he would grab the biscuit and leap out
without getting his paws wet. The second problem was his 90 or 100 pound
mass. I couldn't force him to do anything he didn't want to do. We did a
couple of trips that had whitewater in them, and it took some doing to keep
him quiet. Most of the time the water was set-up-early-and-then-spectate,
so I could hold him down with one hand through the whoop-de-doos, uttering
usually soothing but sometimes threatening words.

In the presence of wildlife, many malamutes and huskies are untrainable, and
Keno was worse than the worst. If I saw the moose first, I could get a
fistfull of withers skin, squeeze hard enough to get his attention and
convince him that I was serious and hold him down. If he spotted it first
(the usual condition), it was a real circus. And the funny thing was - the
response was unmeasured. A moose or a squirrel got the same explosive
reaction.

It was barely possible to get him back on board after a swim, but a 90 pound
double-coated dog brings in so much water with him that I would have to
beach to bail anyway.

On the upriver sections, Keno preferred to make his own way along the shore,
agreeing to get ferried across when we got to a barrier or cutbank. Some
people have dogs that'll line a boat in harness. *sigh*

It's hardly worth boating without a dog.

Hth,
Fred Klingener