The saga of Lola and some 'gility with da boyz

El Oh El A

I've not written a whole lot about Lola's knee problems.  In short she likely has a small. partial tear of her CCL's in both knees though the right knee is worse.  She also has some stuff up with her back.  I took her to the chiropractor because her hips/pelvis were way out of whack and this can screw up the knee even worse.  Hmm, sounds familiar.  Lo and I have chiropractor appointments on the same day next week.  Old ladies and their hips and knees, we can kvetch to each other over coffee and fish treats.  Actually I'm usually the only one kvetching, she's a good sport about the whole thing.  Anyway, I'm trying to avoid surgery for her so for now it's 2 months of leash walks only, no running around though she can go running on leash with me, and laser treatments on her knees.  I've got a laundry list of stretches and exercises too and some stuff on maggot ball, none of which I've had time to do very much of.  She hasn't limped at all so far and she seems fine but the x-rays showed otherwise so I'm going to stick to her regime and hopefully we can avoid surgery.  Her P.T. has a few other clients also taking conservative approaches with this injury so it'll be interesting to see if any of us are successful.  The chiropractor doesn't even think she has a tear and snorted at the notion that she needs surgery.  'If only you knew how many times I've heard that', is what he told me about the surgery.  Let's hope he's right.

Either way this could spell the end of Lola's agility career.  If she ends up needing surgery there's no way I'm returning her to agility.  She's 9 1/2 right now and I was thinking DOCNA Champs this September would be her last hurrah and maybe we'd even pick up her MEX right before Champs, she's pretty close.  But I don't care about any of that if she's even slightly injured.  Even if the tears do manage to somehow heal I'm not sure I want to risk her injuring herself again.  I want her golden years to be happy and active and maybe the risks of agility simply aren't worth it.

Strum was limping last week too which was very nearly the straw that broke the camel's back of my sanity.  Jonny saw him limp for a step on Tuesday, checked his feet to make sure it wasn't a thorn or something and though there wasn't anything he stopped the limping when they started walking again.  Strum did the same thing for me on Thursday except it was 3 steps of limping before I checked his feet.  I thought about taking him to the ortho vet on Friday when I took Lola in for her laser treatment but I thought if I did that I might very well have a nervous breakdown.  So I'm waiting to see if he limps some more before I go into panic mode with him. 

I took him out to the agility field tonight for the first time since the trial at the end of May and he was fine.  I worked on some more weave pole training, this time with them in the middle of a fast sequence.  I had a turn after the dogwalk to a straight tunnel and then the weaves with a slight offside entry at a decent distance from the tunnel so we could also practice dogwalk turns.  There was a jump close after the dogwalk as a trap and he fell for it the first time through but none of the others.  Out of 5-6 dogwalks he had one miss on the turn.  His weaves were perfect though, hit every entry, didn't pop out, let me rear cross at the entry, front cross at the exit.  The first rep he came barreling out of that tunnel so fast and I was well behind him, I thought there was no way he could hit that entry even if he wanted to but somehow at the last second he did it, I could hardly believe my eyes.  I wasn't even sure he saw the poles.  I'm starting to feel confident that he's close to being able to get them in a trial.  We have one day of USDAA in a couple of weeks so we'll see where we are.  Not sure how much time I'll have to practice but it is what it is.

Guess who else got to come along and play?

Those pesky whippersnappers.  I'll show them how it's done.

Actually what he mostly did was eat rabbit poop and pee on the tall weeds at the outskirts of the field.  But I had him do a few tunnels while Strummer had to stay so we could work on Strum's self control around agility.  I even set up a little jump-jump-table sequence with the jumps at 8" so he could play at running a bit and I could get a distraction for Strummer that involved me running away from him.  Strum was perfect, such a good boy.  He's come such a long way with his self control.

I'm pleased with how things are shaping up in practice with proofing and distractions, now to see if we can get it to transfer to the ring.