Yay Asher got to do full runs. His favourite part was of course that he got to do box work and he did lovely box turns. With the full runs, started out releasing him from the gate and worked him back to 30ft. Wasn't really winding him up as I wanted him to take it steady but he was accelerating well. Not at full speed but then I wouldn't expect him to be especially not running from that distance (he does need a good run up, he's like a jet taking off!). Was good to see him doing really good box turns and then trying to accelerate on the way back. He tends when he is racing to carry the speed he generates on the outrun to bring him back as well so doesn't really drive back that much so I was happy that he was picking up speed on the return as he didn't have the usual speed from his outrun to rely on.
The rest of training went well. I got to run the lovely Elliot who is an angel in the flyball lane and so easy to run. We trained the teams for acremead (minus piper who will be in Rockets) . So ran Rockets as Jemma, Perry, Smartie, Elliot and Jamie. The plan is to run Jemma in blue lane (this is her good lane) and Perry in red lane. Piper, Smartie and Elliot can swap the middle 2 positions and Jamie on the end. We've submitted 18.9 which on paper should be about right but you never know! Ballistics are going to be Diefer, Luna, Sonny, Lacy and Bunty (unfortunately Rosie has gone lame). They all looked good at training, was happy with boxes except Diefer who seemed to regress quite alot, very annoying as up close he does lovely turns. We've submitted 18.4 which again should be very achievable but the fastest time they did without Asher last year was 18.76 so we will see! Planning to do a race or 2 over 12" aswell to see what difference that makes.
Had some real breakthroughs with the starters this week aswell. Finally got Moss doing some nice 4feet turns with a ball. This has taken a looong time but I'm hoping something has clicked now. The problem we have is that he has no motivation to drive off the box, he is not interested in a 2nd ball or tuggy once he gets the ball in the box and at the moment is only interested in coming to me. This is something that we will have to work on and I am going to have to distance myself a bit from him so that he will work for his mum. He should be doing full runs within the next couple of training sessions so we will see the full extent of his drive problems then. I'm hoping because his eye is so strong that he will be a racer and that will be his motivation to drive back but I'd much prefer he was concentrating on us as he still has a tendency to chase! Ruby is now picking up the ball, she is only holding it for a second but still progress. We've also seen improvements in Charlies box and he is driving better to the box, he is certainly now ready for atleast starter competition but his handler still requires some training! Chez and Abby have stopped training, quite annoying when you put so much time in to them! But we have 2 newbies to fill the spaces. Dylan a lovely Staffie cross who is loving every minute and doing really well. And Freya a Large Munsterlander who has an amazing natural box turn.
Pups are about 8months now. They get faster and more focused every week. The beginnings of box work will start soon, but we will take it slowly and I will be setting homework as this lot have absolutely no excuse not to be brilliant lol!
So so looking forward to this weekend, really need a good flyballing weekend, it's been too long!
Olympia
7 years ago
2 comments:
Yay...go Asher!!! :o)
Probably blindingly obvious but...I would run Diefer over 12" in training, put wings/netting between the start gate and first jump to make sure he runs in then gradually remove them. Give him at least one run in every warm up of competition with wings at the first jump to make sure he does it right. I suspect he did it once because of the change of height he wasn't expecting and then it just became a habit...some dogs are like that (my Mac is one)...like repetitive machines that occasionally need reprogramming ;o)
Thanx nat :-) we have already been doing this, the problem may have been that we didn't put in the wings on the very 1st run of the day because we totally didn't expect him to do it (we know he doesn't like 14" but not had any problem with him over 12 in training)and so he got it stuck in his head. Every race after that we had wings and warmed him up. Then in racing he might do 1 or 2 legs before deciding he was going to run out again but that was from start gate, from further back he wouldn't do it at all. My idea is to remove the ball from the box everytime he comes up the side rather than over the jumps and everyone ignore him. Couldn't really do that in comp though as you don't know where he might go looking for a ball i.e other teams box!
Sounds like Sonny really does take after his dad, he is the sort that very occasionally needs a slight reprogramming!
xxx
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