Flyball Training
Flyball is a lot of fun at the moment. We’re focusing on individual skills work rather than teams; this is mainly because our dogs all need skills work, but also partly because not all our dogs are team-ready yet, and we haven’t made any decisions regarding lineups for next season. That will happen soon (I have my coloured post it notes at the ready).
Dylan is really improving, I’m so happy with him. He got to do his first full singles runs this week and he was awesome, great turns (great for Dylan, anyway) and really driving back to his toy. He’s going to be 8 by the time he competes again but I’m already psyched to be back at flyball tournaments with him, in a consistent team he’s really going to make a contribution and fulful the potential he has left. His fastest years are behind him now, unfortunately, but I hope he can still creep under 5s and maybe run in a sub-20s team again. Of course, all the pressure is now on for us to find a few decent height dogs!
Speaking of midget dogs, Daisyface did her first two jumps this week! A jump and a stride regulator, actually, but it was more about testing her striding then anything else. She started off on a 7ft gap and it gradually increased to 10ft, which she bounced comfortably. For a little dog she has a big stride! We’ll probably leave it at 8ft gaps until she gets to four jumps, just to really drill in the bounce strides, and then start extending it slightly. She’s still over 3″ puppy jumps anyway. She’s also started learning her paw targets this week, it’s adorable and she’s great at it.
Rio didn’t get to play this week as I want to make sure her pad is fully healed and unbreakable before she starts hitting the box again. She did get to play some CU games around the equipment, and because she did well with that, she also got to play some ball retrieves. We’ve been working on this as she was reluctant to spit last time we did it at training, and apparently we’ve now gone the other way; she won’t hold the ball, she just jaw-touches and then grabs her tug. This also makes me happy. It’s a lot easier to work with tug obsession over ball obsession!