The other night we had the pond all to ourselves.  There were no people fishing and the guys who are usually there with their remote-controlled sailboats were not there either.  This doesn’t happen very often and usually we only have a small corner of the pond to train.  Since the place was empty and the weather was cool, we were able to spread out and train some things we had been wanting to work on for a while.

This was what we worked on, (I put them all on one diagram):

First, we worked a Water Blind set up on the bank in a clump of grass.  Thunder did well on this.

Next, we worked Land-Water-Land Doubles where we threw the bumpers on land, but the dog had to swim the pond first.  We varied the distance of the line from the edge of the bank, starting out close and moving further back.  He did well on these and wasn’t at all bothered that he had just run a water blind between the marks.

Next we had Thunder run a land blind.  His handling was very nice on this.

Then we ran a water blind from the other direction.  This was a bit tough because the bank was close to where he had to swim and the wind was blowing in such a way that it was pushing him toward the bank.  The object was to keep him in the water and moving toward where the blind was planted.  He did fine with this and stayed in the water.

Finally, he ran a basic water double.  He loves these.  I posted those pictures as my Wordless Wednesday post.

Yesterday the weather turned hot again so he ran a few water marks and blinds.  Today it is cooler so we hope to run some land marks and blinds.  The trouble is that we really don’t have the space to make them as long as we would like, but hopefully they will be long enough to help him for the test.

PS sorry about that earlier test post.  I was trying something new on my blog, which I don’t think is going to work. 🙂