We had a pool when I was a kid in SoCal. In the 10ish years I lived there we only fished out 1 dead rodent.
Many years later a friend of mine had his Labrador retriever drown in the spa attached to his backyard pool. This was the typical more or less circular tub 8’-10’ across with a ledge forming a bench seat all the way around. How exactly a water-loving dog could fall in, then not stand on the ledge and climb out easily was a mystery to all concerned. The dog was plenty capable of bounding up and down the stairs in the house two at a time, which is about the same height & width per step as the spa basin and seating ledge.
Then again, this particular dog had about 2 brain cells. They were both sweet-natured, but there wasn’t much else going on in its empty lil head.
Bottom line was still that a large water-capable dog drowned in a small pool it could easily have climbed out of. Lack of knowledge of how to escape is much the bigger risk to critters than is the lack of a plausible escape route that would be obvious to humans.
No, it does make sense, if the spa was kept warm. Being a water-loving dog, it would have felt comfortable enough being in the spa, perhaps even liking it. The warm water and steam would have made the dog groggy, it could have just stood in there until it dozed off and drowned. Public spas have 15-minute timers to remind people to get out, so I would expect the same sort of thing would apply to dogs.
Or the dog had a seizure of some sort or quickly succumbed to the heat. I would find those more likely than the dog couldn’t figure out how to climb out via the bench seat. Dogs can be dumb, but most of them can climb out of a small hot tub.
We have a pool and a young chocolate lab and the first thing we taught him when introducing him to the water was where to exit safely. Most edges he would have just hung on to exhaustion so we made sure he knew exactly where the stairs were and repointed him when he went to someplace inappropriate. Nowadays even when we’re gone he’ll get on a float and laze in the pool, then jump out and swim right to the stairs. As mentioned above, yeah, they have to know where to go.
And as Bone says there are zero entry pools. I really wish this would become the norm for pool construction going forward.
Sure, there are zero-depth entry pools. They’re also known as beach-entry and are used for wheelchair entry to pools and I suspect that the reason I’ve only seen them in very large hotels or water parks is because it take a very long pool to gradually slope to four feet deep. Wheelchair ramps usually are a foot long for each inch of rise, so the pool would have to be 48 feet long just to get to 4 ft deep. Plenty of people don’t have space for that - hell, plenty of people only have space an above ground pool.
Yes, if the ramp is only replacing a single step * although I wouldn’t actually call it a zero depth entry if there were still two or three steps. And I’m not sure how that helps animals get out (since they are not zero depth on all sides)
About a month or two after I went away to college, my dog (who, obviously, I left at home) died in a neighbor’s swimming pool. He just didn’t come home one day when my parents called him in, and after he was missing a couple days they put an ad in the paper. Our neighbor called and said they had found him drowned in the pool and had buried him. I guess he didn’t have tags? I don’t remember.
My parents didn’t even tell me! They waited until I came home for Thanksgiving!
Which would matter if a person was taking a wheelchair into the pool. I suspect that would not be happening. Given buoyancy and, oidk, water-wing-like things, it seems to me that the wheelchair ramp idea is kind of silly. In hotels, the pool typically has a crane-lift-chair-like thing to allow wheelchair users to enter the pool directly into deeper water.
Some do - but I was originally responding to someone who expressed a wish that zero-depth entry would become the norm in pool construction. And my essential points were that 1) they require more room than an pool with steps or a ladder and the equivalent swimming space. Let’s say the slope extends 5 feet (and then there’s a step or two) What diameter pool do you need to have the equivalent swimming area to a 10 foot diameter pool with steps or a ladder? I’m guessing you’ll have to make it at least 14 feet in diameter 3) Since presumably personal pools are not going to be constructed like zero-depth entry pools at waterparks ( which are usually zero-depth around the entire rim and deepen toward the center) you’ll still have the issue with the animals getting to the right part of the pool , just like with steps or that little cloth ramp. It’s one thing to teach a pet where to get out of a home pool, or call your pet toward you at a public pool. It’s another thing entirely to think it will prevent squirrels or other small wildife from drowning.
I use a fence around my pool. The same kind required to keep small children out. Works like a charm for uninvited dogs, marmots, cows, and other assorted mammalia. I think the death toll stands at 1 cricket and untold numbers of flies and insects.
I did try to introduce my dogs to the pool with aim of teaching them safe exit techniques. They acted as if we were inviting them into a cook pot. Fence is staying up.