Training today at the club

We were back at the club this afternoon to train for awhile. No distractions today as we were the only ones training. He was not too responsive today, so we took it easy. He's been limping occasionally so I gave him the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe he wasn't feeling 100%. We'll rest up this weekend and hope he's back to normal next week. I always wonder if I am overtraining when I train almost every day. It takes about 20 minutes to drive to the club, so I usually train for 30 - 40 minutes when we get there. Would like to train in shorter segments, but this is Iowa - and the weather is not conducive to getting outside to train in the winter.

Having said that, we did work a little on most of the utility exercises. One of the things I've been working on with the articles is trying to get 'look up' fronts on the return. I've worked a lot on this with the basic comes and he's getting pretty consistent at looking up at my face when he comes to front (spitting treats has really helped with this). However, if he's got something in his mouth (article, glove, dumbbell) he tends to look to the side or down and not up at my face when he comes to front. I did a few come fronts with the article in his mouth separate from the article exercise and saw some improvement, but it does not carry over yet to the exercise. Would like to find a technique that would help me get look-up fronts with articles and gloves. It makes his fronts straighter and closer when he does look up.