Saturday July 28th 2007 - team practice

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

Woo hoo!!!!!!!! Today was a really exciting practice because our team's novice dogs made some terrific progress! Today was only the second time (I think) for them to try a ball retrieve (no box) over a few jumps, and by the end of the exercise, Zara was sending over three jumps completely independently and back over all four, and carrying the ball the whole way back!!! And, after a few no-box retrieves for Milo, they put the ball on the ledge because just this week at home practices he's started to pick up the ball and maintain the turn. Lo and behold, he sent from two jumps back, totally independent, did a gorgeous boxturn, picked up the ball and brought it back over the jumps!!! Plus, Jasmine's and Tashtego's ball retrieves are coming along too!!! I see Sammy and Lucy having some company in the full-run department very soon! Sorry for all the exclamation points, but it was our most exciting practice since the new dogs got their boxturns.

New for Lucy today was doing full runs passing into the green dogs doing a recall from the box. She did running passes into Milo and Jasmine and we held off a bit for Zara who needs a bit more time to get used to being passed into. Finished with some full runs passing into Sammy who was racing (and I do mean *racing*!!) today's guest, malinois Emily.