I've decided to go with the person I know for Lola's PT rather than the fancy pants place. She's got an appt. for Weds. night, we'll see how she goes. She's still limping here and there, for a while she was worse than before the stupid shot, and she seems a bit depressed & fed up but just a couple more days then we'll see what she's allowed to do.
I'm afraid I'm not doing much better as far as running goes. I had a good run on Weds., 3 mins. running/1 min. walking for a total of 15 minutes running. No problems, felt great. Then tried again on Sat., upping the running to 4 mins. and my knee started feeling crappy in the same area that was hurting a couple of weeks ago after only 3-4 minutes. I went back to 2 mins. running then got up to 4 by the end of the run (16 mins. running) but I felt tired & gimpy afterwards. Then tried biking on the trainer on Sun. since it was cold & nasty but managed only 40 minutes. I tried doing a shorter, higher intensity workout since the trainer is so boring and the PT had suggested this would be the best way to build up strength but after a few sprints, a 5 min. seated hill climb and a few more sprints my 'good' knee was complaining, probably compensating for the bad knee. I suppose 40 minutes isn't so awful when I think about how little I've been riding and how I haven't been doing speed work but still, it seems pathetic. Swimming is going well though, if only I could get my butt to masters more than once a week I'd probably even see a little improvement.
Sunday afternoon I took Strummer out to Biscuit Eaters to work on his foundation jump training and his weave poles. He's to the stage in the lessons where I'm walking him through the field and rewarding him for taking jumps we walk past. I'm also rewarding him for walking with me and doing front & rear crosses on the flat before and after jumps. I also sent him into the occasional tunnel just to break things up. He did really well, the only problems being that he backjumped a few jumps and knocked a couple of bars because he was focused too much on me and not paying attention to the jump. He was also starting to jump with a little too much extension. Right now he's still supposed to be jumping with a lot of collection. I suspect he's going to be a very flat jumper if I don't train him properly in the beginning so I'm going to stay at this stage for a while and maybe even go back to the single jump for a bit.
We're still working on his weave entries with 2 poles though I do have the 2 sets of 2 poles side by side. I was working my way around the entry in a circle and he was great for the on side entries but started having problems when I got near the 12 o' clock position (right in line with the poles). I had to stop before he got too fed up.
Table is going great, he hops right on and gets in a down with no cue from me. He sniffs the table and pauses a bit before lying down but I think that will stop once he's really clear on what to do.
Chutes and tunnels are no problem. Tire jump has to be low for now and I have to step in to direct him or he runs through the space between the frame and the tire. After a few reps. he got the idea and I could back off of the frame a bit.
I stood by the baby teeter to see what he'd do and the crazy dog jumped up on the high side and rode it to the ground. He looked a bit startled but I gave him lots of praise & treats so he wouldn't freak out. I lowered it way down and he came back and pushed the board down with his nose & paws. That's exactly what I want right now. I don't want to teach him the teeter formally until he's solid on the dogwalk. I finally painted the boards I'm using for contact training as well as his Buja board last weekend so now I have no more excuses to not get going with his contact training.
In all, a busy week/weekend with little down time. While it feels good to be productive I'm looking forward to the 3 day weekend.
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