Drop on recall

I haven't really done any serious training since August which is simply inexcusable. My attempts to start consistent training in September ended when I lost my job. Someone might think that being unemployed should give me a plenty of time to do the stuff I want, but somehow I felt that I was even busier than when I had a job. I think, finally, things are settling down and I am trying very hard to get some sort of schedule worked out that allows me to do things I don't have time for. My new office is only 1.7 miles away from my house, so I am planning on coming home a few times a week during lunch break in order to get some daytime training done, but of course weather had to interfere and dump some snow on us, right after I had made a decision to come home for lunch. Don't take me wrong, I am not really afraid of snow, but the problem is that the snow only last here for maybe a day, after that it turns into ice and jumping dogs on ice doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
There are many exercises that are not where I want them to be and need a lot of work. One of those exercises is Drop on Recall. We've been picking at it occasionally for a pretty long time and I yet again I had decided that it has to be finished. Unfortunately, lately that means that I will remember to work on it for maybe two days and then completely forget about it for months, which explains our lack of success with the exercise. But yet again I am trying. Every time I decide to work on this consistently we make a tiny bit of progress though. Mozart had been dropping on the spot from the stand with me 40 ft away for a while now, but I was unsuccessful with achieving it in motion. First, I restarted the work on random drops. Every time I take him out for a run, I try to remember to do a few random drops as he is running about his business usually away from me. Wish I had a video of few of those drops when he was running away from me that flipped on the spot and downed on command really fast.
After he seemed to mastered that, I had decided to pair it with the recall again. The result - after maybe one successful drop Mozart was creeping forward again. To make my point very clear I went and took the light line. One end of the line was attached to the tree and the other end was attached to Mozart's collar. I measured the distance at which the line will stop Mozart's movement and put the mark there. My goal was to give Mozart the down command just in time that if he drops he will not get a correction, but if he decides to creep forward the tug on his collar will remind him that it's not appropriate. At first it was great, a couple of corrections and Mozart was much more mindful of the command. Unfortunately after just a few times he started to expect the drop, because he was attached to the tree I would have to go back and detach him and do a few straight recalls before going back to drops. This was quite annoying so to solve the matter I went and got an even longer line. this line was going from me, behind the tree and attached to Mozart. The goal of this setup was the following - when I give the "down" command, I will step on the line, if Mozart is not down, he will get a collar correction to stop his forward movement. If he drops, I would go in and praise him profusely. If he anticipates I will not drop him and will remind him that he should be coming unless there is another command given. That seems to work very well. I was truly surprised that just after two sessions he was doing full distance DOR yesterday in class with so many distractions and at a pretty good speed.
There is a progress at last!

Merry Christmas

Finally! we went last night and got our tree and the wreath. Can't wait to decorate it.