After showing massive improvement with his feline friends, Bill has a new fetish.
It does not come at all unexpected to us that he loves water and chasing birds (whether he would kill or is just flushing out we are not sure although we suspect eventually we will find out once he catches one).
We love the fact he enjoys swimming and fullfilling his nautral inbred instinct, the problem is he has no concept whatsoever of when funtime is over.
Saturday morning he bolted for a a very large bog of stagnant water in our local park, I spent half an hour calling him to coax him out and eventually he came. Having walked a good quarter of a mile away from it and believing I had his attention, I let him back off his lead and started running so that he would follow me. Big mistake he turned straight back round and was in it again. After 45 minutes of trying everything to get him out (and he knew what I wanted him to do as he kept swimming past and looking at me), I called my husband who had to come to the park and help me get him.
Believing me to be the drama queen my husband thought I was exagerrating until last night at the total opposite end of the very large park he bolted again (we were a good mile away from the bog). We caught up with him and sure enough there he was some swimming around with birds flying out in all directions, 45 minutes later it was getting dark and we made the decision one of us would have to go in, it just depended which one of us he came closest to as we stood at opposite sides of the bog. Unfortunately it turned out to be me and I found myself waist deep in stinking stagnant water wading after him. Thankfully I managed to grab him and we walked home dripping wet and smelling awful. After I had calmed down having found a slug on the kitchen floor and thinking I had them in my underwear, we all had showers and blow dries and settled down to discuss this behaviour.
As he's a rescue and was a stray found wandering the streets, we know nothing of his background. His fitness levels seem to have increased since we've had him and he has lost about kilo in weight so this led us to believe he has not been used as a worker as he didn't seem used to the long walks and lots of exercise.
We knew he was obsessed with birds even before we started letting him off lead as he pulls like mad and goes ballistic whenever we go near a duck pond, he loves the water as well but more so when ducks are in it. We don't mind this at allthe swimming that is not so sure about the duck obession (its wicked watching him swim he loves it), but we do need to know he will come back to us. We do a lot of walking and go away for weekends so are walking in areas unknown to us, if he does this then we could 1) lose him or 2) and worse, if he bolted into a farmers field or something he could get killed.
He is now back on his long line until we can trust him which is not much fun for any of us as he loves running and we love watching him run.
We've had him 8 weeks now and he goes to dog training and is very good (he's been moved up a class already), but with no distractions he looks very well behaved as there's nothing else for him to do. Get him out in the open air and fields and he is in a world of his own and in particular if water and/or ducks are involved so far he's shown no interest in livestock (other than rabbits and squirrels which again is understandable).
No matter what his background worker or pet, he needs to listen to us for his own sake, we now have no doubt this type of behaviour is what landed him in a rescue in the first place. He is now he is tagged with a collar and medallion so if he did get lost and we couldn't find him we would have a good chance of getting him back. However we don't fancy looking like ridiculous dog owners who can't control our hound!
We're finding it difficult to decide how to train him on it as how do we -*test*-('") whether he's learning unless we let him off which means we risk him bolting again. We're thinking of one on one training or gun dog training- anyone ever tried these, or had a similar problem and found something good to resolve it- otherwise we may have to resort to walking him in wetsuits and flippers just in case we have to go in after him again!

eeeekkkkkkkkk...doesn't sound liek a lot of fun glad you've all returned safe.

Suffer similar problems here myself but with sheep so can't help much at the moment, but there's plenty fo good advice on here. What's he like with balls? I'm working very slowly on a chase recall where you offer him a better chase than the one he's got.

unfortunately i have the same probs as you with my rescue sam. he just bolts off if he's off-lead and he disappears for hours on end. comes home all by himself though!!!!

i would maybe introduce a whistle for his recall. i'm sure somebody more experienced will offer more advice on that. but until he can be trusted i would leave him on the line for the time being. with the whistle every time you feed him blow the whistle a few times so he gets to associate the whistle with food. its really useful cos its just one tone and if he does bog off again, he wont here the anger in your voice when you're trying to coax him back!!! there are loads of methods of training recalls, its just trial and error and picking one that suits you and stick to it.

good luck with your springie anyway

Funny enough I had a similar problem last week , although not so traumatic. I was in a field doing a bit of training with my two. I had one off the lead and the other on a 10ft line. I was just swapping them over when they both bolted in to the woods.

Normally they go for 1 min at most then come running back when I whistle. Not this time..I waited for about 10mins... a long 10mins.... then they came back.

Since then I've kept them on a the training lead and will do for a couple of weeks.

Personally, I would look to a gundog trainer. They are used to training these breeds and can help you harness his natural abilities in such a way that you can control them. I hope you find the solution that helps you and Bill.

No advice, but dogs remember things, and it doesn't surprise me that heremeber where the water and his fun place were. Racer moved in with me at 14 months, as living with his breeder and for four lady dogs wasn't good for anyone, anyway her house backs on to a park, where I used to walk. But Racer remembers this and if off the lead over there will run straight to her house, down footpaths and along the pavement, Not good. Basically even though it's a local walk I can't risk it anymore unless Racer is kept on his lead.

So maybe walks without any water for a while, unless you think he'd go further in search of water.