Demo Update

I will save a Trophy agility update for later this week after I see how we do after some major changes to our game plan.

In flyball, Demo and I had an extremely (understatement) discouraging practice last weekend.  One step forward two steps back.  Scratch that. One step forward eight steps back some weeks with that boy. Two weeks ago we were practicing at home and he was doing awesome, then we went to practice and it all completely fell apart.  He stopped driving to the practice board and he completely lost his boxturn again when the ball was introduced.  I think everyone was trying to help, but in doing so we were changing entirely too much. Demo was frustrated.  I was really frustrated.  It was bad.

I only got one short chance to work with him last week. So I didn't know what to expect when we got to practice this weekend.  I handed him off to some teammates so I could go potty Josh, a papillon mix I'm training for a client from work.  And when I came back he was doing really well - driving down to the practice board and finding his jump after.  We completely omited the ball for him this practice.  So his second session I worked on extending the number of jumps before and after the box turn.  He was doing extremely well, so I had a teammate bring out Trophy.  We did full runs witha  boxturn (off the actual box!) both with Trophy passing him and passing into Trophy.  I'm extremely happy with his focus running with dogs in his lane.  Next time (no practice this weekend) my goal is to have a dog before him, a dog after him, and a dog in the other lane.

At this point I'm not going to worry about him taking a ball as long as he maintains good form on the box.

CanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAmCanAm :)