Back in the day, 2004, if memory serves me, I wrote a piece called Xs and Os of Diverse Routines. It’s a pretty good piece on reading dogs and working patterns in dog Frisbee, but it was written about 5 years before the idea of organized disc dog flatwork crossed my mind. It’s dated and things have changed.

A Year of Work

Over the last year, Si and I have been learning a ton together. From the realization that she’s really only comfortable leaping while on a counter clockwise flank (looking over her left shoulder) to being able to put her at maximum leaping height on most every throw, we worked Flatwork, Flanking, Interception, the Bent Cavaletti and are a far better team for it.

Apryl and Kiva did some of this work as well, but they were pretty close to being ready for the bigtime contests so they focused more on Owning the Drop and sequence building. You will probably see the results of her work on TV this winter in the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge Finals where they had a strong showing in an incredible field of teams.

We had the ability to field test a bunch of this stuff in our seminars and camps over the year, and it went quite well. Flatwork is becoming a common concept throughout the disc dog world.

Xs and Os Revisited

This is the first piece of a series where we Revisit Xs and Os of disc dog routines. Over the next few weeks to help bring some more clarity to both Flatwork and patterns that we can use (or get used by) on the field.

Keep your eyes peeled to our FB Page and G+ page. And please be sure to share this stuff far and wide.