Above: Murphy leaps through leaves last fall.
So when the sun came out this afternoon we changed our plans from training to conditioning (and enjoying the sunshine and later light). First up was a bit of hillwork for Teller, where I stand on the top of a hill (small one) and throw a bumper down for him to retrieve back up to me. We haven't had a lot of opportunity to do hillwork this winter/spring first because of snow and cold and secondly I won't do hillwork when the footing is slippery - tonight I found the sandy hill mostly dry with good footing, so we were able to do about 10 minutes of hill work.
After hillwork, I let Murphy have his off-leash time (we were at the expo so he can be off-leash there) fetching his rope man while Teller walked with me...just walking, stretching and a bit of relaxing. After Murphy had his romp (as much as Murphy ever romps), I let Teller do some relatively long distance chuck-it retrieves. All-told another 20 minutes or so.
After that they both went on leashes (flexis) for a 15-20 minute cool down walk/trot/amble before we went back to the car to go home. Perhaps it's from my time with horses both as a rider and a groom - but I think we have a tendency to short our dogs on the cool-down part of their training or conditioning. No, dogs are not small horses. Dogs are different anatomically but as mammals the process should be the same for our dogs as we do for ourselves. This is roughly:

Above: In greener (summer) days Teller keeps the squirrels at bay.
Maybe...just maybe with the warm spring so far this year we just might get the pool opened the first weekend of April - bring on the swimmies!
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