Sunday Practice

The last practice before the next tournament! We started out running the Speeding Sheepdog team and it was a struggle. With only two more tournaments before the Championships (now that September's was cancelled), we have our work cut out. Wisp and Cody seemed to be doing okay, although both were doing low or three legged turns. It's also hard to judge whether dogs are dropping the ball early because of the short runback or whether there is something we need to work on. Zio was staying lower than I want on the box, so we put the jump board in for him. Unfortunately, the ball got loaded on the wrong side for him on the next run and his turns went to hell for a few runs after that... stabbing, hitting the jump board with his back leg, etc... Fortunately, we did a couple up close and he ended the session doing a perfect turn. We tried something new with JL to keep him in the lane, so we'll see if it works. Connie's job was to cover the ball if he tried to go around and Susan Owen stood off to the side ready to correct him if he went around. Sure enough, he tried to go around the jumps on the first run and I think it was a rude awakening for him. The next few times, he tried to go around the left side (away from Susan), but Connie blocked him from the ball. He started hesitating at the first jump after that because he thought he was going to get corrected, so we pulled everyone away and he did the rest of his runs great. We may have to remind him a few times and see if we can make it permanent.

I plan on work Zio on the box a few more times to get him up on the box and then see if we can get back to running consistently at the tournament.