FLYBALL!!!

Pan working on his turn at home  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLADCKBaMgg

Nikon working on his turn at home  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvoCHgEa4A

We had practice again last night.  Both dogs are now on the box and did their turns great (everyone was pleased with how I taught it at home), but Nikon is having trouble catching the ball and Pan started having trouble dropping the ball too soon.

 Luke only recently learned to catch the ball (in any situation). He still doesn't always get it off the box. He used to always lose it behind the box, and he did once on Friday. I always call him back again if he does that. I figure if he loses it behind the box and has to go search, he's probably going to take longer than he does to repeat his run (I seriously need to time him). I kinda backwards chained the catch. I started right up basically putting the ball into his mouth, and then started backing up until he was catching from a bit of a distance. When he didn't catch it, I tried to grab it before he could get it and play with it, so he would learn that you have to catch the ball in order to get to play with it.

We'll be starting our second dog in flyball in about two weeks, though to start out, I probably won't be there with her much, if it at all. Unless maybe, I fly home so that I can pick up both dogs and get them out to the place to train. I get home maybe 50 minutes before the class starts if I don't hit traffic too bad, and we live 45 minutes away. If my sister meets me at the curb with the two dogs ready to go, I could do it. Callie, is a golden looking mutt. She not as motivated to get the ball as Luke is.  She chases, but she doesn't bring it back, and she's not nuts about it like he is.

 So, we're  back from our lesson at the other place. She put him on a chute instead of a box... and, we had him go left. We had tested him at our regular place, and he went right every single time. One the chute, he was going left, even though the ball was on the right. So, we put it on the left, and we got some really nice turns out of him. 

So she tells me, one of the teams  out of Philadelphia doesn't run dogs who don't do a box turn, and gets rid of them from the team or something like that if they can't get them to do it. I think though we're going to check out one of the teams that trains out of her facility (one team already has height dogs- other cavaliers).  The other team has a few senior JRTs who will probably be retired soon. Now I'm off to contact them and see about practicing with them some time.

 Woo! We switched Luke to the left, he's not turning, but he's not slamming head on into the box. He's also not typically losing the ball anymore since we changed him to left. I think I saw some single strides in there too. I found a toy he likes more than the tennis ball, a cuz ball (which I tied a string on so he can't take off with it). Unfortunately, I am going to have to break the squeaker or something, since you can't have squeakers in a tournament. Hopefully he still likes that (I think what he likes is squishing it, will have to see).