Cone Practice for Swimmer's Turns

I've been practicing swimmer's turns with Zio for flyball. I'm attempting to use the cone method to teach him to hit the box. The basic theory is to place the cone on a flat open surface and practice sending the dog away from you, around the cone, and then throw the reward back away from the cone so that the dog learns to turn sharp and drive around the turn. Once you've mastered that step, you place a turn box behind the cone so there is still room to go around the cone without interference from the box. Once that is mastered, you keep inching the cone toward the box until the dog starts getting a paw or two on the box during the turn. (Loads of excitement and praise here). Eventually, the dog has no choice but to get all four paws on the box during the turn and then keep repeating this until it's ingrained.

Yesterday was our first day trying this method and I initially used Zio's frisbee as the chase toy. He's used to being sent around "me" during disc practice, so it was a matter of teaching him to go around the cone instead. After some progress, I changed to using the Chuck-it with a tennis ball. His tug is the reward when he brings the ball back to me. He did great at first, but when I tried backing away from the cone, he would try to go around "me" again instead of the cone. I used one of my agility jumps between the cone and I to block him until he got the hang of going around the cone.

At today's Full Speed Ahead team practice, Shannon helped me add the practice box to the mix with a make shift chute on either side of the box. It really didn't take him too many times to have the cone close enough to the box so that he was driving off the box. He did so well, that I brought the practice box home to mimic the setup here.

I would really like to get him ready for the February tournament. I'm hoping to have him ready for some singles or doubles runs.