Margarita Mania

We've been pretty lax about evening practices, since it's been so hot, and it definitely showed at the tournament. His turns reverted back to punching the box on Saturday, so I spent most of Sunday's racing trying to get him back to his turn. Zio did manage a 4.043 in our first race of the tournament though!

Overall, the team has some work to do. Just about every dog had issues and it was magnified by having to shuffle our lineup. Making changes seems like it should be fairly plug and play, but relearning release points and passing is different from dog to dog. Better a bad outing now than at the championships in November!

And the Dew Claw

The stop pad is looking better, but his dew claw is looking tender too. He might have stretched it while playing. It's hard to determine which injury is the problem, so I'll assume it's both.

Stop Pad

Zio hurt his right stop pad at some point Sunday or Monday. I noticed it Monday evening after I caught him licking his paw a couple of times. He hadn't been limping or anything, but it does look sore. I've continued to walk him in the mornings and evenings, but no activities that require running or jumping for a while. It was starting to look better last night, so I'm skipping the morning walk and letting him rest it more. Connie and Susan Owen had a spray they swear by to help speed up the healing, so we'll give that a try too. He's not going to like having to skip practice on Sunday!

Team Practice

A good practice for the little man yesterday, but we did get some ideas. Susan Owen has taken my 10 inch jumpboard home and had Richard rip it down to 8 inches. The higher board was causing him to hop over the prop and curl his front feet. He was racing Jeep yesterday and I think Jeep will be fast if we can get him over the herding issue.

We took a couple of discs with us on our evening walk and threw some longer distances. I might have to start doing that on a regular basis to get him sharper for the fall toss and catch. Michele is working on a viable demo also, so we may work on some things after practices.

More Backyard Practice

We did another short session yesterday evening, after the shadows had crept across the backyard. I didn't use the jump board, but I did use the gutter to prompt him to the right of the box as he approaches. When he gets really excited to run, he tends to drop the ball between the two jumps coming back. I don't think it's anything to be concerned with at this point since I only have ten yards between the last jump and the fence as a "runback".

First Practice

At least since the Grove tournament. It's been a week since I've mowed and the grass is getting a little long. We slashed our way through it anyway. I put the jump board in as the only prop, but he went a little wide on the exit. After adding the gutter back in, he did nice turns again. He didn't hit the jump board once, but I think I need to mix it up by only using the board occasionally. I still remember last year when he wasn't sure what to do if I took the board out.

Way too hot to spend much time in the evenings, but we've at least got a little shade to do a quick session. He acted happy to be running some flyball again. My Zio racing man...