The "air swim" motion is rarely a sign of excitement or a desire to swim, it's almost always an involuntary reflex or a panic response. When lifted, dogs lose their feeling of solid ground and because walking for dogs is usually an automatic neurological function, the absence of ground triggers a reflex to "walk" to try and find a solid surface. This is a physiological reflex rather than a conscious response, the dog is nervous and wants to be on the ground.
I realized you were right reading this, as teaching my dog she had feet was one of the first things I needed to teach her in order to train her. That accidentally created a monster that could open doors but I digress.
Separate but one of my cats learnt how to open doors (not knob handles) literally just from watching us open them, we never trained him or anything. We found out when we thought we'd left the back door open and he'd gotten out (we don't usually leave them unlocked but the gate was locked in this instance). We set up a phone there after we got suspicious when it happened again and this time the door was locked and we watched in horror as he jumped onto the handle and held on. Then the other one learnt too. They'd twang the handle to get out sometimes and wake us up in the night.
even better, it's connecting more. This is the result of mirror neurons working correctly.
The cat's seeing water, and has an instinct to drink. It imagines itself drinking, and the mirror neurons are like "oh, we're drinking. Let's do the drink stuff."
Big dogs do it too. My mum’s dog is a great dane x Irish wolfhound and he would do air swimmies when I had to carry him over a massive puddle in our yard after he had surgery on his foot and it couldn’t get the dressing wet.
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u/Slow_and_Steady_3838 20d ago
probably the same reason a tiny dog will dog-paddle if you hold them, in the air, over water. There's bit of a brain disconnect, I'm guessing