The Team
Felt a little bit like I had my own personal team of flyball dogs this week at Thursday training.
Kim and Mollie are both back to competition next weekend in Starters with another of our older but experienced dogs, Lucy, and two of our proper Starter dogs. Mollie was so excited to be back, she ran herself out over 7″ quite quickly but she’s sound and happy today. Kim wasn’t quite as stupid, she doesn’t have the muscle tone for flying over 7″ jumps anymore. She has a weird skipping stride on the way up to the box but I genuinely think it’s a striding issue; she’s spent her entire career running over 11-13″, so suddenly coming back to 7″ after a 6 month break is a bit of a change. She doesn’t have the power to single stride up to the box but she’s trying, hence the weird striding, but coming back it’s a more sedate double stride which looks comfortable and easy.
Dylan looked good, I’m happy with how he’s running at the moment. He has a tendency to revert to his wide turns without the appropriate props but I have no illusions, his current box turn is effectively a retrain and it’s nearly impossible to completely eradicate old habits. He was driving back really nicely though, he loves doing singles runs where I run down the side of the lane. Favourite training game ever!
A quick aside: I was recently surprised when I ended up watching a video of a 10month old flyball dog doing full runs including box turns, within a team of other dogs. I shouldn’t be surprised, but Rio is 10 months next week and she’s no where near that stage. I have absolutely no doubt that she could be; she’s a very fast learner, super smarts, and I’ve been teaching flyball for a long time. But I’m not sure why I’d want to, seeing as I want Ri to stay enthusiastic, confident, and sound.
So, here’s what Rio is doing now, at nearly-10-months. She did her first jump this week!. She’s now being held on the box and then recalling over the first 7″ jump at 15ft, and no further jumps. What I’ll do next Thursday is put the stride regulators in where the second and third jumps would be, and once she’s striding out over those we’ll start adding in the jumps. I’d anticipate her getting to four jumps at 7″ in about 5-6weeks, when she’s 11 months, and then I’ll start bringing her boxwork in.
My rough outline is for her to be able to complete full singles runs over 7″ at 13 months (September), and then start introducing her in a team and head-to-head over the winter to come out in Open at the start of the 2013 summer season when she’ll be 18-20months. But it’s a sketchy kind of plan, Rio’s the one who really sets the pace.