Holes

So the past couple days have been pretty busy as far as school, etc goes so Rugby has been hanging out a little bit. The work that we have done however has been very good for us. The other day we found a couple holes on the retrieve over the high jump and the broad jump.

The problem with the high jump is Rugby's commitment to the retrieve. When he isn't on his A game, he takes the shortest/quickest/most direct route to the dumbell, even it it means running past the high jump (if the dumbell was thrown off to the side). We spent a couple days addressing this problem with a lungeline on, and having him accept that I can interrupt his retrieve. He was realllly unconvinced at first I though he would never get it. I did this by having him sit or down before he got to the dumbell. Having been corrected for not going quick enough before or not going at all...Rugby thought I had lost my mind. He was sure that I didn't really want him to stop. At one million times later, Rugby was okay waiting in the middle before he got his dumbell.

Then we moved back to the high jump. He hasn't shown me that same problem again but we are prepared now to fix it when he does now. Infact today he was back doing full distance ones with no lunge line one. I made it a point to throw one off to the right to make it so the path he followed back to me was easier if he missed the jump, but he prevailed and changed his course to go over it.

The broad jump, Rugby has a love hate relationship with. When he does it, he looooves it and is enthusiastic about it. Then there are times that he tells me no, he can't do it at all. I think this is just because he is still testing the waters as far as the broad jump is concerned. Once he gets more practice in and more successes he will be much better at it. Today the first set that we did he made no mistakes. Then we came back and did one and the second time he refused. ?? I don't get it but I just went back and had him go over the jump, did a couple break aways and then we were normal again.

Still need to work on our fronts after the broad jump. I think he wouldn't have a problem if I better defined the front position for him outside of the broad jump. Sooo, we are focusing on doing lots of recalls, retrieves on the flat and over the high jump to get extra practice getting straight in front of me.

It is strange because Rugby consistently chooses to be more towards the right side on the front after the broad jump and Pete consistently chooses to be more towards the left. Pete is much better about it though, so Rugby and I have some catching up to do.

I was a little dissapointed that he started to make these mistakes out of the blue, but...at least he didn't wait till we were in the ring to do it. Gives us a better chance to make these things solid before he has to do it at a show.