Saturday Field Drills

I went to the fields near the local airport to do drills with my Flat-Coats this morning. Lining drills became the theme. I started out with one pile for Ty, to work on a stable response to a sit correction. Even a 1 medium creates a bit of a hot spot, but I can see improvement and much less panic in her response. She's also confident enough on her handling on land now that I can stop her quite a bit to handle her through those hot spots.

Next I did wagon wheel with both of them, building distance for Gryff and seeing a lot of improvement over last weekend when I did it; closer in for Ty, who hasn't done too much WW. Interestingly enough, both seem to have more trouble going to the closer-to-us white bumpers than to the farther away orange ones.

Then I put out two back piles, and three stick men on a diagonal, with 25 yds between them (so a lopsided M). As an extension of both the Split Casting drill we have been working on the past several weeks, and the wagon wheel drill, I worked on sending and casting to the back piles from various locations, with the stick men in between me and the back piles to create suction.

We packed up and went to a pond, and I set up something similar there for Gryff to work on, with 3 stick men along the shore and orange stakes farther up the shore (maybe 10-15 yds) with a pile of bumpers at each. I worked on lining and angle back casts as we had on land. Another benefit was the tall cover along the shores, with a few obvious and tempting gaps. It gave me a chance to work Gryff on driving straight through the cover coming out of the water. Since Ty's water work is on hold until her e-collar response is stabilized, I just did fun marks with her, but required her to go in and come out through the cover along the shore.

It was a fun and productive morning.