For those that feel it's not "macho" for their dawgs to be assisted up or down, I can only tell you that at age 68 and with all the associated aches and pains that come with it, I still assist the dawgs up into the bed of the F-150 and even the back of my Jeep Wrangler.

They are trained to go stand at the open bed and place their front paws up when I'm immediately next to them. At that point I command "UP" and place my hands under their rumps and give them an up assist even though they are attempting to load on their own.

As far as down is concerned, you can simply grab their collar over the back of their neck and command "Down" while lifing up on the collar which allows you to effectively "glide them down" taking a lot of the impact off of their front quarters. It will greatly lessen the joint(s) impact as they hit the ground.

I help my older dog up and down from the truck. She deserves it.

Thanks for the lesson Cappy...I had never thought about it and with my first duck dawg this is great info to know.

Are you talking about me? If so Remi is only 57 lbs

man mine also was scared of water as a pup, til he was probably around 6 months old. I took him to my parents swimming pool in the summer and just got in and swam around. He watched from the side for a while and finally I just pulled him in with me. He was scared at first but if you hold him and coax him he will realize its not bad at all. We also had another older lab that was swimming at the same time. Just get him introduced to water thats not freezing cold and he will love it. Mine loves swimming now.

Here's how my lab was introduced to water:

She fell into the breeder's house pool when she was 4 weeks old. The temp was pretty close to freezing. She sank to the bottom and then swam back to the surface. Haven't been able to keep her out of the water since.

sounds about right for a knothead labrador

I have three and if theres water around, they'll find it.