2012 Disc Dog Season Begins!

The disc dog season started yesterday with the annual fun match!  Vito and I haven't practiced any disc in several weeks but we did get to work quite a bit this last fall and "winter" due to the crazy nice weather.  We had been continuing to work on eye contact and not screaming at me in an effort to get Vito to think a bit more on the field.

The fun match just had 2 rounds of Toss and Catch so I was eager to see if Vito could remember our work of walking onto the field politely.  He did!  I've learned to pre-place a disc near the field a dog or two before we go as this allows me to walk around with him and wait quietly.  Round 1 I let Vito grab the disc with me and I transferred him to the start line as such.  I quickly gave the thumbs up and Vito didn't do any screaming during the 3 seconds the disc was removed from his mouth and the count down began :)   In Round 2 I decided to try Vito carrying the disc to the start line himself.  This is my eventual goal with him but currently it is still hard if I have other discs in my hand.  Since there is only 1 disc used in Toss and Catch Vito did a nice job!  And once again there was no screaming during the 3 second delay.  His dropping of the disc was also very fast the second round and we were able to get in a 5th throw.

And the best part of the day was that Vito relaxed enough to eat a stuffed Kong while sitting under the tent.  We were about 15ft from the field!