I realized something last night: Basil has sores on his back feet, likely from working on our concrete driveway two days in a row.
I feel terrible.
I noticed yesterday when we did articles that he was running back to me sort of funny. This was before we did gloves and signals and everything went downhill...and then last night when I took him out for a run on our property, he was walking very tenderly through the pine needles. He has a small scab on each foot's pad. My poor boy! When we lived in an apartment and the dogs were walked on sidewalks every day, this never happened. But now that we live in the country, their pads just aren't as tough as they used to be...they're never on concrete unless I do a training session in the driveway.
Today we did do a little training, even though the sores are still there (they healed pretty quickly and now they're the size of half a pencil eraser; I think they were just opened tender spots from running on the concrete). We did some articles and Basil did GREAT. We worked in the grass and did 8 articles at about 12 feet; he retrieved perfectly each time. We did do a few signals, and he's still hesitating on the down; I gave him a couple verbals, and after that, he did one or two signals downs. He's lying down slowly and awkwardly so I think it may have hurt his feet. We stopped after that, because he needs a couple days off for those feet to heal. Maybe we can work on the moving stand in the basement, which won't bother his feet at all.
Teagan had a wonderful training session. We're doing full-length retrieves (something we weren't doing as recently as a month ago), full-length DORs (had a couple bobbles today, probably because we worked in the back yard for the first time) and also did some work on the broad jump. She's made great progress there and I've already removed one of the guides. Adding in the ball as the reward for jumping has made an enormous difference; she'll do anything to get that tennis ball. Today her fronts were a little sloppy; she was sitting far out. I attribute that to working in a new location, just like her DOR. We're going to go do some out-of-sight downs on the front porch (I can watch her from inside the house). I'm very hopeful that I'll be able to trial her this summer, if we can keep working at this pace. We still need to work on the high jump and the off-leash figure 8; the 8 won't be a problem, but I do think we'll need to work on that jumping with retrieving, because she's not a good jumper.
I worked with Peach a little bit; she's so very distractible that it's not much fun to work with her. She's not driven to work for food, and she does like the ball but even with that she's still highly distractible. She's very much a teenager.
