A Small Saturday Practice

Well, it snowed and nearly everyone bailed out of practice. It is the holidays, though, so it's only the truly sick who come out to shiver in the cold with their dogs. I was there, of course. I thought it would be a time to let the dogs romp in the fenced practice field all by their lonesomes (kinda hard to do boxwork without a boxloader) but, shockingly, someone else showed!

We did boxwork. Both Weasel and Spoiled One did well at going for the tug, and Spoiled One aka Smash and Grab was actually hitting the box with all his tootsies. Of course, he was only doing it when the prop was there, but instead of having to use the elaborate V in front, it was just a jump! However, he was going way to wide. In retrospect, I believe it's because we were using the V prop, but opened at a right angle, with one side parallel to the box in front of it, like a jump, and the other half folded back alongside the box. I believe he thought he still needed to jump both sides, which explains why he was hitting the box with his back feet and why he was going wide. I still think I can figure out a way to use this, though.

Weasel's box turn was beautiful, of course. We experimented with me boxloading and the other person running her and she did fine, no hesitation. The only problem was she occassionally spaced actually getting the ball. That was easy to remedy by having the handler remind her about it before releasing her. I was bad, however, and gave them the honking pheasent, rather than the tug, because I had no faith that she would continue to respond to the tug. The handler, though, was getting her to tug a bit on the honking pheasent. Again, possibilities are there.

Sky, the other dog has issues with not paying any attention whatsoever to the ball, and being highly distractable and inclined to play keepaway rather than flyball. He was, with a lot of encouragement, actually watching the ball and picking it up. Granted, it involved tapping on the box, chanting "ball ball ball ball ball" and such, but it was an improvement. The small practice with few distractions was very good for him. He also did some nice recalls, back and forth over the jumps, between me and his handler.

So, all in all, a good practice. I will be glad when it gets lighter sooner and we will be able to have more of these small, highly focused, practices.