It is Friday already! Time to join Heart Like A Dog and co-host Dogdaz for the Follow-up Friday blog hop.
Thunder generally makes a big splash because he is a big dog and hits the water hard. Maybe you can see the bumper he was going for in this picture. It was the first mark of a double.
Going For The Bumper Just To The Left
Thunder wasn’t the only one making a splash last weekend. Freighter did a good job too. His training is coming along slowly. He is at the point where he tends to over think things. The jump from running marks to handling can be a big one. His marking is not as good as it was and he was back to running on singles. That is not unusual for a dog at his stage of training. Hopefully it will all come together for him.
Freighter Taking Off
Getting Ready
Launching
…And…
Splash!
Coming Up For Air
Good Boy!
Taking pictures last Saturday was a bit difficult. It was a bright sunny day and the sun was reflecting off the water. I could not make the camera do what I wanted and I could not see any detail on the dogs. You can see what I am talking about in the last picture. I did a little research and found that this is a common problem with digital cameras and has to do with how my camera meters the light. More settings to play with in the future. 
We are counting the days until Storm comes home. We miss her. But just to be clear, we are not getting a puppy from this litter. I think it is going to be a nice litter, but we have enough dogs with three. Besides as I understand it, all the pups are spoken for.
I Like This Picture Of Storm With Her Pups
After reading the comments, I guess we are not the only one with park woes. Normally people are very accommodating and give us space. So far this year that has not been the case. I blame our late Spring and people being in the parks who normally wouldn’t be and just not having a clue about manners.
I thought I would post a picture of the set-up we were trying to run. It was a good set-up and it is a shame Thunder didn’t get a fair shot at it. I marked the soccer fields and the big hill. This hill is quite high. If I stand at the bottom, I can’t see over it. The line was at the edge of the parking lot to make use of a small ravine. The lavender squiggly lines are where the kids were running around. We have had so much rain, we tried to stay off the soccer field as much as we could.
We Threw The Bumpers As Numbered-1,2,3–Thunder Tried To Pick Them Up-3,1,2
If you remember, Thunder was on lay-off last Fall due to an injury. He is running hard now and we haven’t seen any limping. We would like to try him in a test because we have also been working on his stickiness with the birds which seems to be much better. Unfortunately Thunder is very rusty on multiple marks on land. These have always been difficult for him. He does fine with multiple marks on water, but land is a different story, especially if the marks are long. They have increased the maximum distance of the marks to 150 yards. We have been trying to stretch him out which is hard because we do not have that kind of space available. At this point, Thunder does not need extra distractions when he is trying to mark multiples.
Going For Mark #2
Running Hard
Gizmo asked:
What exactly is that winger? What’s it look like up close? It doesn’t look like the normal training bumper…
A winger is like a gigantic sling shot. We can throw bumpers or birds with it. It has two settings which allows us to adjust how far things will go. Bumpers will usually go farther than birds since they are lighter. The bumper is an Avery Jumbo HexaBumper. It is a flasher and has white and black which is supposed to make it more visible for the dog. We use these bumpers when we want the dog to get a good look. I hate to admit how many kinds of bumpers we have.
Winger Up Close
Here Is Thunder Demonstrating The Sloppy Way To Hold A Jumbo HexaBumper
Thanks so much to Heart Like A Dog and Dogdaz for co-hosting this hop!
Thunder and his handler have a training seminar this weekend so maybe I can catch up on my blog reading.
Have a nice weekend!
This is a blog hop!
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