Rolling On
Everything has started again for 2014; we’ve been back to agility training and done two flyball sessions now. Dylan and I also went on a Maintaining the Canine Athlete workshop with Veterinary Physiotherapist Hannah Michael, which was excellent. Would highly recommend! I learned loads and I’m trying to make changes now, which isn’t as easy as I had hoped (in terms of exercise). My dogs do a lot of free running but not much structured exercise, but I need to change some of that to get them as fitter.
As we did the muscle and joint checks, it was clear that Dylan was sore in his “usual” places; shoulders and lumbar. It doesn’t confirm my decision to retire him – that was comfortably made – but it makes me feel happier about it. He really enjoyed the stretches we did on the workshop too, he got very relaxed and comfortable about it all.
Dylan’s retirement day is this weekend at Wilmslow. I’ll still run him despite the soreness, which sounds terrible. It probably is, but I feel ok with it. It’s the kind of minor tension which doesn’t merit pain for a dog, just means they won’t run at 100%, and I don’t want him to do that anyway. He’s not quite 8yrs old but I am absolutely sure retirement is the right decision for him. Just as I was with Kim! I’m finding it very hard to explain why this is, but I feel very content with the decision. It makes me feel that our relationship is a good one, that I can see the very small things in my dogs which tell me that they are reaching the end of being able to physically give what is required.
He will carry on doing flyball. We trained on Sunday and he looked great, smoother and more confident than he’s looked for ages. I hope he has a team to run with over the summer but it’s not looking promising right now. We don’t have enough height dogs as we pulled Daisy from training.
Speaking of Daisy … she is learning to control herself around the other dogs again, and we’re going through her socialisation all over again. It’s frustrating at times, especially when some family members make small errors which set us back, but we’re on the right road. Right now it all seems worse because she’s in the dramatic teenage phase as well, which amplifies all the other issues. She is learning to trust us again, and we work on changing her stress responses. She is turning on the box now, without a ball, and she’s learning her agility foundation. She’s got her first class this week, although it’s just a environment introduction. She’s a dog who needs a job, and hopefully my Intro to Agility class will work for her. Rio is her biggest problem right now, because she can’t handle Rio’s energy levels.
Which nicely leads on to Ri! I love this dog, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that. Her joy is infectious. She’s triggering the box with the ball comfortably now, and did her first session of jumps to the box last week. No problems, although toward the end she started clowning around. She has a sense of humour, that’s for sure.
This week we started her Robbins Recalls, which didn’t go quite so well. Lots of ball spitting! Nothing we didn’t expect and we are making progress. Her striding and turn held up well, and she’s collecting the ball from the box at least. I think this will be the hard bit for her, she likes RUNNING and ACTION and that means glossing over the small details. We’re back on to using a toy instead of food though, and her focus and enthusiasm and drive is fantastic.
We still need to do some more work at agility, I’m starting to find the best handling options for her now. We need to do a bit of work on her jumping again, she’s a little bit hit/miss with take off points. Similar to above, Rio likes to GO, and thoughtful gets thrown out of the window. Instead of thinking, shortening, putting in an extra stride to find the appropriate take off, she just launches. K called it “bambi jumping” and that’s pretty much it. She’s like a deer, springing over things. We should probably do some of the extension exercises which would encourage her to skim the pole but most of them involve pole-knocking, and I fear it would be all too easy to have Rio think pole-knocking is the aim of the game.
Dogwalk and seesaw are still the mission. She does not like the seesaw, even with the RunAway game. I need to build her confidence on the dogwalk. It would be nice to run some agility classes before her 3rd birthday!