One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward!

Practice yesterday was a mixed bag of eventual progress. In warm up, he had great recalls and fantastic tug play. Later, Zio did well in the practiced passing with almost all of the other racing dogs. Even with Wisp, who I thought might present an issue for my little man.

His retraining on the box had not progressed to putting a ball in the box, so I was very reluctant to practice full runs with the team. The team felt it was necessary, so we gave it a shot anyway. As suspected, Zio immediately revert to punching the box to get the ball. After watching him do it twice, I pulled him from doing any more full runs until I could reintroduce the ball into his retraining. With the Grove tournament in 5 days, I was mentally kicking myself for not holding him out of this tournament.

During a break, I took Zio to one of the boxes and did a few dry (no ball) "hit it" turns with him on the box just like we've been practicing. I put a ball in the box and after a couple of tries, he started doing a pretty good turn. I used this method a few more times during practice... practicing "dry" turns without a ball and mixing in a few with the ball.

At home, Zio really seemed to get the idea and hasn't punched the box once with a ball in place. Most of his turns are now with the ball and I'll mix in an occasional dry turn to reinforce it. I'm cautiously optimistic that we may get enough practice in before Saturday to have it sink it for the tournament. Then we'll have to wait and see if he reverts back in the excitement of the race.