The reason for training your dog to do ‘Swimmers’ Turns’ is to enable them to take the ball from the box in a smooth action. All too often we see dogs taking the ball by jumping onto the box and springing back off, this must cause a lot of strain on their joints and cannot be good for the long term health of a dog. We have devised a two stage process for training swimmers turns. First we train the dogs to run away from their handler, run round a traffic cone then return to their handler. We do this as an extension of basic heel work, the handler walks down to the cone then guides the dog around the cone by use of a treat in their hand, then walks back to the start point, the command we use is “Away”. We continue this process with the trainer taking a stationary position, and then slowly build up the distance from the start point to the cone so we can eventually send a dog ‘away’ from six feet. This is a training method we can continue to use when we are not at a training session, by sending our dogs ‘away’ round a tree in the garden or a chair in the hallway. Once we are confident a dog is OK with the away command we introduce “The Shoot”, this is a device devised by the Scotia Dust Devils, an American flyball team. Stan made ours quite easily in his garage using the information on the Dust Devils website. Our second stage of swimmers turns training is to place the shoot behind the cone, we then build on the away command by training the dog to walk over the shoot and take a tennis ball at the same time. Gradually we can build up both the speed at which the dog approaches the shoot and also the angle at which the shoot is set.