Saturday February 17th 2007 - Team practice

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

(Last week's practice was cancelled because TTH was in use for an event.) Today for the first time ever Lucy raced head-to-head with dogs she never saw before and no gates between the lanes! Two dogs from another team joined our practice for some head-to-head racing as a warmup for an upcoming tournament that they're in. I'm so proud of Lucy; she did just great. She never even thought about crossing over, and she didn't seem bothered when one of the other dogs came over to her lane and sniffed the ground for crumbs while I was holding her. The only time she didn't bring the ball back was when it fell out of the hole before she got there and it was hidden behind the slant board (which was the only prop we were using). We were racing as pairs with Sammy, alternating which dog went first, and the bonus is that with the excitement of having new dogs around she seemed to forget her worries of being passed coming back from the box: she took all of the jumps and I didn't have to block her! Mind you Sammy was being held a fair bit away from the last jump and not released until after we passed, but still this is great progress! We raced 2 races with 5 heats each.