Celebrate

I hate holidays. Nobody tells me what I have to celebrate and when I have to celebrate it dammit! Maybe I don't happen to feel very thankful on Thanksgiving day or terribly patriotic on the 4th of July. The flip side of this is that I do like to celebrate things when I sincerely feel the emotion behind it so today is Happy Trails Day. Most days are happy trails days really but some days just feel more joyous than others and today was one of those days-partly because it was my first time on the bike since knee surgery two weeks ago and who knows how long before that, partly because last week we were freezing our asses off with record breaking cold, snow & -25 degree wind chills and today it was sunny & in the 60's, and partly because I freshened up my mp3 player with some new tunes but mostly because it just felt like one of those awesomely special days and I felt like celebrating it. I wasn't on my bike very long, just 45 minutes and a whopping 5 1/4 miles but it was pure heaven on wheels. The doctor gave me a strict talking to about not overdoing things in my recovery or I'd be back in his office sharpish and told me to make sure everything I was doing felt ridiculously easy so I couldn't be out nearly as long as I wanted but maybe that made the time I had out all the sweeter.

We took the dogs down to the Rez. so they could run like loons chasing their toys on the nice soft sand. Strummer is turning out to be a frisbee dog which isn't really a great thing since frisbee chasing is an ACL tear waiting to happen but he's obsessed so I've been trying to throw the thing as safely as possible which is problematic since I suck at frisbee. It was wonderful watching them all run their butts off, tongues hanging down to their knees in the warm sunshine. During the summer months the Rez is shut to dogs so we have to enjoy the beach as much as we can the next couple of months.

Later in the afternoon I took Strummer to a park by my house to practice some agility flatwork and his sit and down stays. I started out having him do simple U-shaped turns then worked on front crosses and luring the turn away from me for the rear cross. I taught Lola rear crosses that way and it worked great, (Cody just naturally understood rear crosses, I never had to train him). Then I tried getting him to do the U turns around a tree which was meant to mimic a jump standard. I 'm hoping to train a lot of basic behaviors away from the equipment so he can be nice & solid with it when I introduce the equipment. First impressions are very important for dogs and I want everything to be easy & positive. I'm still working on getting him to drive really fast to a target before I start his contact training. Right now he's trotting over to the target but I want him really running for it before I go any further.

I pulled my entry fee from the NADAC trial this weekend and I'm very glad I did. I'm in no way ready for that kind of running. I've been to the pool a couple of times for 20-25 minutes and the swimming was fine, I swim with my knees locked anyway so I could barely feel anything in my knee but I could work the other leg muscles. Only problem is I can't push off the wall which makes keeping up with intervals in masters difficult. 30-40 minutes of walking seems to be my limit but my knee improves so much each day I'm hoping to increase that next week. Weather looks great for biking next week so maybe I can sneak a little ride in somewhere. Also going to increase my time in the pool and start physical therapy next week so I can get a better idea of how deal with this rehab. The doctor was good with the cutting and he answered all my post surgery questions well but wasn't too good about providing a specific recovery plan.