Saturday July 28th 2007 - team practice

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

Boxwork was lame as usual today. Seeing the progress the other novice dogs made today (see entry on Lucy's flyball page!!!), I'm going to do some homework with dead ball/toy retrieving and try going back to rewarding with treats instead of tugging the ball to see what that does. I really like the deadball retrieve exercise over jumps that the other dogs did today (I didn't try it with Walter) and will focus on him being able to do that before taking the ball from the box. Being passed into by Sammy went fine.

Saturday July 14th 2007 - team practice

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

Walter wasn't in the mood to tug the ball today; I wonder if it's because my hands were bare, having forgotten my tugging gloves. Anyway, on the times that he took the ball he dropped it quickly, BUT on the bright side the choppy turn he's been doing when the ball is there is getting smoother. Also, did head to head recalls for the first time (and there were no gates or barriers between the lanes) and all of the dogs handled it really well -- I was so impressed!

This video shows a relatively smooth turn (used to be even more choppy/step-by-step) but a quickly dropped ball:



Interesting that he's on his right lead when about to turn left. The rest of today's video shows he does this consistently.