Training with Gail :)

Our lesson today was with Gail because Lesley has fractured her elbow :( (the sad face is for Lesley fracturing her elbow, not for us having Gail!!)

Jemma:
The contacts she did were nice today, although I let her go a little early on the seesaw (naughty mummy!!) We worked on her weaves a little, and decided that once she is in them and on her way she will carry on if I run on, so I need to work on getting her them first time and her finding her rhythm quicker so that I can move on and she doesn't come out at the end because she is wondering what I am doing just waiting around!! We also worked on her jumping quite a lot, on her getting used to me getting close to her and pushing her over the edges of the jump when back crossing rather than leaving her to take the middle of it with lots of space and room and then end up doing a huge arc. She really didn't like this at the start and would knock the poles down all over the place but at the end she was much better :) Still lots of us to work, all just fine tuning for both me and her!!

Elliot:
We started with our weaves and he did six really nicely from a long start and at quite a speed, we then pushed them up to eight (the first of the six was a bit wibbly wobbly) and he tried them all all the time, once he was in he would (except for once or twice) go to the end, he was just picky about where he went in. We then did some complicated jumping with him and he started going under the poles on the corners so we took him back out to long straight jumps and he was fine, as with Jem he doesn't like me encroching on his space but he also struggles with the short strides between jumps. We worked on his jump-tunnel starts and discovered it is his distance from the jump that affects whether he goes under or over it - the further away he is the more likely he is to go over it - we shall work on this, gradually getting him closer because at the momment he needs to be a distance away that you would rarely get in competition. We then went back and finished on some weaves and a little course - on guiding him to the first weave pole he did them all beautifully, dont think it will be long before he is doing them in a course on his own :) However, he again got worried about the course because it was a bit twisty, we got over this though by me being really encouraging and excited all the way round and he only went under one jump (it was a different colour to the others and had to go down to small for him to see it!!)!! Am looking forward to continuing to work with him and see him grow and develop into a cracking little dog :)

We are back to flyball on sunday ready for our competition next weekend :)