Friday, December 29, 2006

Winter Wonderland My Ass

Last week's blizzard was a nice novelty but enough already. I spent 1/2 hour last night shoveling 3" of snow off the driveway only to spend and hour this morning removing a foot of snow from just half the driveway. I slid off the road just a few blocks from my house on my way home from work yesterday when I tried to turn onto my sidestreet. Luckily I was going about 5 mph and managed to steer clear of the stop sign so there was no harm, I simply slid to a stop and got back onto the road with no problem. I didn't even try to go to work this morning, huge SUV's and pick-up trucks were sliding all over my street and I decided it wasn't worth it. I just finished a project a week and a half early and I'm way ahead on my other project so I didn't feel too bad working from home. Looking on the bright side, Eldora ski resort got 16" of new snow so the cross country trails should be wonderful tomorrow. Whether the road up the canyon to get there will be so wonderful is another matter. I suppose I shouldn't complain, my mom called last night and said she had no power for the last 8 days because of terrible wind storms. I guess that's the downside to living on a small remote island.

Aside from the general pain in the ass to daily life the snow has prevented me from any agility practice. The indoor drop-in practice at Boulder County Fairgrounds has been cancelled for 2 weeks because of the holidaze and Biscuit Eaters is buried as is most of my yard except for a few paths that Jonny dug for the dogs. My house is too small to practice indoors so I'm out of luck until classes & drop-ins at BCF start back up a week from next Monday. The USDAA trial next weekend will be interesting. I pulled Lola from the trial because of her injury so it's just me & Cody. We'll see if I'm any more focused/less frazzled with running only one dog. I really wish I could practice though. Even in winter I seldom go weeks without practicing before a trial as what little snow we get usually melts in a few days at most. Oh well, no use fretting over something I can't do anything about.

I finally got Lola in to see Antke for a physical therapy evaluation. She did an exam similar to what the vet did and found a latissimus darsi strain in her right shoulder (the ortho vet didn't even check her right side since she was limping on her left). She couldn't find any problems with her left bicep tendon but that was likely because of the cortisone shot. It's not healed by a longshot but now she has no symptoms so it will be harder to judge her recovery. Antke agreed that the cortisone shot was not the best thing but what's done is done and she won't get any more. On top of the evaluation, Antke showed me how to do some massage and stretching of Lola's shoulders and recommended having her balance on the Buja board while I move it for strength training. That will be difficult because Lola's not used to standing still on the Buja board. It'll take a little work to help her figure that out. Her stretching/massage routine takes me 1/2 hour and I'm supposed to do it twice a day on top of 2-3 fifteen minute walks on top of training and exercising the other 2 dogs. I have no idea how I'm going to find another 1 1/2 hours out of a day that already has too few hours in it for all I have to do but somehow I'll have to work it out. Thankfully Strummer is nearly 2 and finally calming down a bit so he doesn't need quite as much exercise and attention as he did at this time last year. Still, I'd like to get him going with his agility training and finding time for this will be tough. At least the days are finally getting longer so once the snow melts I should be able to fit some practice in after work. However by the time all this snow melts it will probably be time to set the clocks forward anyway.

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