Thursday, April 7, 2011

Flyball training and racing

I wish I got some video of Pax at flyball practice last week! He did awesome! I let him go from jump 4 to the box and then all the way back to Ben, with a dog passing into him and two dogs racing in the other lane...no baby gates. He held his ball every time and didn't even look at any other dog.

The only thing we need to work on now is his box turn and making sure it stays nice while adding speed to the box. I'm pretty sure he has been so easy to train because of his crazy tug drive. He is a serious maniac on the tug.

Here is last nights session

This weekend we are going to another flyball tournament! Epic & Indy are going with Joy on Friday night and then we will run them on Sunday. They are on a team together with Ezri, Tina and a borrowed borderjack height dog. It should be fun & fast!

Lure Coursing

We went to our first race practice with Pax, Indigo and Epic this past weekend. We wanted to try all 3 dogs on the lure to see how they would do. Indigo and Epic seemed to be herding the lure. They both almost did an outrun, past the lure and then came back to get it. They also might have been running directly for Ben, rather than the lure at all. Who knows...but we will probably continue to run them in practice since it only costs $2 per dog and it is long distance running, which is great for conditioning.

Pax was another story. He has seen the lure once before and immediately starting going NUTS! He was barking and whining up until I let him go for it. He ran by himself, so its hard to say how fast he was going. It looked pretty fast to me! Several people commented that he probably has some potential for doing well in performance events. I think so too!