Go fetch!

There's a ball diamond not too far from our house where I've been taking Summit to let him run. A few months back I had seen Chuck It's! on sale and bought one, uncertain when I would actually have the location or dog to use it. Summit's problem up until recently was that he retrieved perfectly in the house but out in the yard he had a tendency to get too excited. He'd run after the toy and pick it up, but then get this look in his eye and go absolutely crazy running around doing zoomies... usually without the toy.

I'm not really sure when the light switch flipped but it did recently and so now I take him to the diamond and play fetch with him. I usually get him started with a stuffy so he can tear around like a crazy greyhound for a bit. Once he starts repeatedly bringing the toy back to me I break out the Chuck It. I'm still not using it to its full distance potential, but I want to make sure he brings it back so I don't have to go trekking after it. I got the whistling balls (you can hear them in the video over the wind) but even so he sometimes loses track of the ball if it's thrown too far.

And this was the dog who a year ago wouldn't even put a toy in his mouth. I had to teach him how to fetch from square one (Part I, Part II).