Thoroughly enjoyed this second seminar. Team Fever (http://www.flyballfever.com/) did another awesome job organising, and Kelly and Aaron from Rocket Relay were as good as they were last time they visited the UK in March.

Lots of new things to work on, and a lot of new insights for me personally. I know a lot more about BAT training for behaviour than I did at the start of the summer, and it was interesting to see how much of this training is linked to that idea of considering thresholds, and teaching the dog a better behaviour rather than just managing the problem.

Having been at both seminars helping, it was interesting to see how many people had progressed and how many people hadn’t. Personally, I have worked really hard to get Dylan switched to a tug. He is now at the stage where he will switch 100% of the time and is actually spitting the ball on occasion now we’ve reached that point. A lot of other people have obviously worked on the same thing as there was much less ball obsession this time around. Progress!

It was also really satisfying to see Emma run Diva in her private lesson. I’ve been boxloading for Diva in training to keep things consistent for her and so I volunteered to boxload again at the seminar, and so I got a front row seat. Emma held off starting most of Diva’s training until after the first seminar, and has worked really hard with her. It paid off because she was fantastic in her lesson, just little tweaks for Emma. I can’t wait to see her debut next year, I think she’s going to surprise a lot of people. Watch this space!

Not so good for Dylan over at Drax though, due to a team member pulling out the night before (grr), Dyl ended up in an NFC team with 2 dogs from Rotherham, plus Roi and George from our own team. My mum was handling and made the very wise decision to pull him out completely after the first race as despite racing perfectly, he was getting uncomfortable and stressed about the situation. This is such a good example of how much inconsistency and change can upset a dog; our intention was to change one thing about Dylan’s normal flyball situation by running him with a new handler (bearing in mind the intended handler was my mum, who lives in the same house and runs him at training regularly, but has never done so in competition without unfortunate consequences). Instead he ended up with a new handler, a new boxloader, a new box, and 2 new dogs on the team (plus he doesn’t particularly like Drax as a venue anyway). It was far too much change for him and I am so glad mum spotted it and pulled him out.

Of course, on the other hand is Kim. She is way more experienced and it showed. She was totally unphased and so completely kicked ass despite running with a handler she had never met before, on a new box with a new boxloader. (Um, thanks Beth for stepping in and running a strange dog!)