Practice: new strategy

Trying yet another strategy for helping Walter in his flyball student career: Have decided to not do any boxwork at all for a while, but instead when it's his turn we just play fetch with the ball being thrown up the lane (no jumps though) towards where the box would be. He brings it back for a game of tug. The idea is I want to see him as excited to play fetch at practice as he is at the local field, or at least close to that level of excitement. If he's not excited about chasing a live ball at practice, how can I expect him to be excited about going after a dead one, nevermind a dead one where he has to do a weird acrobatic maneouver before taking it? Over a few practices we'll ease into the ball becoming gradually less live and more dead.

Today he was definitely into it, no problem running up the lane all by his widdle self to chase the rolling ball. I hadn't removed the jumps and they kind of got in the way (if I had perfect aim, or heck, even decent aim, it would be a different story) so next time I'll move the jumps out of the way first.

Practice

Instead of doing boxwork we worked on getting him to take a ball from someone's hand. At first he wasn't into it, so L threw the ball for him a few times. After that, he decided it was an ok game to play. For his second session, K held the ball for him.

He's dropping the ball not long after picking it up, but I'm not too worried about that at this point.

Open practice (big grassy field)

Today was Walter's first time at the open flyball practice. His degree of interest was actually surprisingly high given that it was a fairly warm day. Did a few recalls and one round of boxwork. The practice leader suggests instead of using the music stand, to have someone hand him the ball after he does his turn, but only if he does a good smooth turn. So, homework is to get him taking a ball from my hand and other people's hands.