Saturday October 7th 2006 - team practice (TTH)

(Backfilled in October 2009 due to impending closure of Geocities)

We started with some head-to-head racing with Sammy, and the two of them decided to play comedians. In the first run, I released Lucy a few seconds after Sammy started, and Lucy decided she wanted to run in Sammy's lane (what a good dog, she totally ignored Lucy). I wondered if she was trying to chase Sammy, but then she did it again the very next run, when Sammy hadn't been released yet. Once Lucy got it straightened out which lane she was supposed to run in, Sammy decided she wanted to play the same game so Sammy ran over to run in Lucy's lane (before Lucy had been released)! These were their first runs of the day and after those initial goofups they ran in their proper lanes the rest of the practice. Good news: Lucy and Sammy can now do running passes with each other! "Passing" has been going so well in recent practices that we decided to let the dogs do an actual running pass. Both dogs did excellently, no matter if they were the first or second dog to run! I videotaped today's session and it's fun to watch the pass in slow-mo. For some of the runs I set up the video camera for a good side shot close-up at the box at dog's-eye level. Watching it in slow-mo you can see how the dog actually catches the ball in the air so I now have a much better appreciation for the co-ordination it takes on the part of the dog! Also, from watching the slow-mo I could see that she's starting to develop a half-decent push off the box.