Hey there, Scott.
I’m glad your story had a happy ending! It sounds like things could have turned out tragically if you and your wife hadn’t been watching him so closely.

Unfortunately, while life jackets are certainly helpful and provide an additional layer of protection, they’re not infallible — particularly for dogs who’re suffering from other health ailments, like epilepsy.
In these cases, it’s just important that you watch your doggo like a hawk and be ready to intervene if he starts having trouble.

Thanks for sharing your experience, and again, we’re glad everything turned out OK!

Being it’s June of ‘21 now I realize this article is a bit old. I just wanted to put something out there that actually happened to us today with our 14 yr old retriever mix. He had ACL surgery last August. Where I live you don’t get good boating weather until roughly right before Memorial Day weekend. Our dog has done tons of walking but not anything very stressful on his body. He swam a couple time yesterday and did fine. Today we didn’t listen to the parent in us and brought him again today instead of letting him rest. He had been out one day prior a week before. We stopped once to let him pee and get in and cool off. All good. Very shallow sandy area. We then went to another spot about an hour later to let him swim. I thru the ball in and he went and got it but on the way in I could tell his head could’ve been higher. And no way was he letting go of his tennis ball. I was on our boat and told my wife to watch him. I turned to grab our cooler to put on the beach and my wife yelled. The beach has a fairly steep incline and drops off pretty quick but there’s still plenty of room where it’s still an incline but slightly. When I looked my wife was trying to hold him up. Apparently when he got out and walking along the beach his rear right leg gave out and while it was only about 8-12” deep, he went under on his side.
I got to him and he was completely out of it. Tongue out, rear legs stiff and both pointed toward. I gave him a few thrusts up under where his ribs meet his chest. He came to but I didn’t think he was going to. It seemed like forever. I don’t know if he had a seizure and was out of it when he fell or if his leg gave out and with the incline, lost his balance and just didn’t have the footing or strength in the sandy water to hold himself up. He has swam here 50 times over the years. But reading about theses jackets for dogs made me wonder if they would’ve helped much. If he had a life jacket and had a seizure in the shallower water I don’t know if that would’ve got him back over upright if his legs were dragging on bottom. But the main thing that concerns me reading this article is what would’ve kept his airways open if he was unconscious? I saw the chin assist vests but if your dog has no control of his head would that keep his nose out of the water? I realize these aren’t everything you need. That’s why as you mentioned “watch your pet”. As with kids, it only takes a split second. Had we both had our backs turned this easily could’ve turned out worse. But I’m still concerned for animals that have seizures. I’m not sure what it’d look like if you needed the protection I described. Once they can’t control their heads I don’t know if any of these would work.
I apologize this being so long. This honestly did happen to us today. It did happen once last summer, but some kids had him so tired and threw the ball out for him to get. Fortunately I was watching then because the water was over his head and I ran out and grabbed him. I think he was exhausted because I saw the whole thing. Your right! They can’t swim forever like people think. Even the best water dogs.

Thank you,

Scott

Hey, headspace.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. It is unfortunate that there aren’t more options on the market, but we hope that’ll change in the future.