A Distinct Lack of Excitement

For Rio, anyway.

Rio was spayed on the 28th March. Her stitches are due out on the 9th April. She will probably go back to agility training on 4th June. This is mainly because I am very over-cautious and K says it takes 60days for true muscle repair. Keeping her quiet is very hard; she left the vet surgery bouncing off the walls and hasn’t really slowed down since. I’ll feel marginally happier when her stitches are out, but there is still a lot of internal healing to be done, and I would much rather wait a few months and make sure she is absolutely 100% before she starts rampaging around at agility.

To keep her entertained over the next few weeks I’m going to try and intensify our trick training. It’s an area I’ve been slacking on, and I always need to work on my timing. I also had a lot of fun teaching basic proprioception to an Agility Skills class this week, and it reminded me that I can’t do too much of this kind of thing with my own dogs! Ri still gets really excited about training but I’m trying to pick out tricks which require more thought than physical exertion.

I want to have the following begun or improved in the few weeks:

• Stand … I fail at teaching a stand
• Bow
• Flat (nose to the floor in a down position)
• Backing up more confidently/to a greater distance
• Four paws in a box (we’ve sort of done this, but not down to small boxes)
• Elephant trick (we’ve sort of done this too, but not to full extent)
• Stacking on the FitPaws Pods
• Retrieve objects to hand (not toys!)