A number of people have expressed confusion over whether the large salamanders called “mud puppies” really are puppies. Sometimes this leads to unsuitable gifts for small children.
Real puppies are warm and fluffy and playful. Mud puppies are cold, wet, and apt to bite really hard. There is no truth to the belief that they grow up into dogs. Mud puppies they are, and mud puppies they shall remain.
You are unlikely to find real puppies swimming around under the ice in winter. What you’d be seeing under those circumstances are almost certain to be mud puppies.
And there really is no point in trying to train them to do tricks. They don’t like it.