Today Lightning ran two sessions of seven retrieves each, with a short break in between. I acted as handler and Liza, my assistant, was the thrower, or “gunner”, though we didn’t use gunfire.

We worked on the outfield of a baseball field where we’ve never worked before. Lightning ran each mark in the same direction, with only the distance, and the side where the throws were coming from, changing.

For the first session, Liza threw to gradually increasing distances up to 40y, occasionally moving over to the other side to throw in the opposite direction. For the second session, Liza threw all the marks to the same spot at 40y, sometimes from the right, sometimes from the left. She was clearly visible the entire time.

Lightning did a good job on every retrieve. He never showed any confusion about whether to return to me or to Liza as he has in the past, and he ran directly back to me most of the time, rather than trying to run around me.

I think it’s likely that Lightning could have run longer marks, run the marks well with Liza firing a pistol, or both, but I didn’t want to risk problems after such a breakthrough performance. Those will be objectives for sessions later this week.