Your comment about the dog catching fire prompts me to share a story and photo.
Look closely and you will see my first GWP Hank poking his head out of the middle port on that boat blind. We hunted a coal fired power plant cooling lake that morning and it was 13 below zero F when we launched the boat. There was 1.5 inches of ice in the cove we setup in and we ran the big commercial jon boat around in circles in the dark for quite awhile breaking it up before we backed into some willows and started setting out decoys.
We called in a flock of giant late season Honkers which decoyed to the edge of decoy spread. My Brother and I were both shooting BPS 10 gauges and we killed two and had a third down and swimming away into the whitecaps. That boat blind was not setup properly for a dog to have a chance at a mark and Hank was going nuts to get out the back of the boat and get at something when the smoke cleared. I hustled him out the end of the boat and sent him into the decoy spread after lining him up in the direction of a goose floating at 50 yards on the outside of the decoy spread. He took off swimming in the direction sent, saw the dead goose and powered to it. Meanwhile my buddy who owned the boat asked me if we were going to need our our "Blow Up Boat" to retrieve the swimming away cripple. (The blowup boat was an inflatable Zodiac boat with 10 HP motor we towed behind the Jon boat for use in tending decoys and running down cripples). I responded "yes" as Hank swam to me with the first goose. I was standing in the water in my chest waders so Hank did not have to exit the water as I knew the air temperatures would be immediately brutal on him when he got out of the water. I took the first goose from him, gave him a hand signal towards the second dead goose and commanded back. Hank turned and swam through the decoys til he located the second dead goose also 50 yards out, grabbed it and headed back to me with it.
Meanwhile the swimming cripple had died and was floating dead about 150 yards out. I once again took the second dead goose from Hank while still in the water and sent him again. He swam out past the decoy spread to about 75 yards and started circling. I hit the whistle I had trained him on, he looked for the command and I gave him an upward hand signal and "Back" command. He took it, swam/turned around and started swimming out to sea. Pretty shortly you could see him plane out and pull hard as he spotted the floating goose.
So 500 yards of non-stop swimming/retrieving in ice water in 13 degree below zero air temps retrieving three 14-15 lb honkers.
The minute we got Hank out of the water and back into the boat his teeth were chattering and he was shivering a bunch. I toweled off his head, neck and hind quarters I could get to which were not otherwise covered by his vest. We both sat down inside the blind and I had a heater running in front of us. After a bit Hank got dry and laid down to take a nap.
I was looking out the porthole in front of me when Hank suddenly sat up, catching my eye with the movement. I looked down and the top of his head was a ball of flame!!! Apparently he had rolled over and gotten his frizzy hair top knot too close to the heater.
I yelled "Hanks on FIRE!!!" and immediately tamped the fire out with heavily gloved hand. The stench of burned dog hair filled the blind. Hank looked up at me like "Take it easy on the heavy petting there Boss".
Alls well that ends well. That Hank dog was special and to date I would rate him my best ever. Nothing stopped him except 16 years of living ...
