Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Water marks: more corners

Today, Laddie, a bird-girl, and I returned to the closest training property for another training session devoted entirely to difficult water entries. Continuing yesterday's work, we used a different but similar collection of ten water marks, each featuring a longish land entry and a short swim across the corner of a pond to a white bumper thrown, and often visible, on the far side. Visibility of the bumper wasn't an accident. I wanted to be sure that Laddie knew where the fall was and was not cheating land because he thought that the fall was possibly closer to the corner.

The temps weren't bad, low 60s, but we had a brisk breeze to go with on-and-off showers.

Laddie tried to run around the corner on the first mark. I called him back and resent him, and he did great. He then took water the first time on the next seven marks.

I guess the eighth was especially difficult, because he ran around the corner three times. When I sent him the fourth time, I made up my mind I'd whistle and handle him, which I did, but I questioned myself almost immediately because that last time he was just entering the water on a good line. Maybe the handle wasn't necessary or useful that time after all.

Laddie then ran the ninth and tenth marks without a problem. The tenth was a re-run of the eighth that he'd had so much trouble with. If he gets that picture in a trial this weekend, maybe he'll be ready for it.


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