Smile Trophy

No agility practice yesterday due to the extremely gross and hot weather.  Trophy and I were at a lame event for work instead.  He got to show of his tricks for some little girls though and that made him happy (as you can see in the photo above - I FINALLY captured his smile in a picture!).

Flyball on Saturday was ok.  Trophy foot bled a little even though it was wrapped.  He had a recheck appointment with the vet on Monday.  She said :"his foot looks great - but oh, hey, he has a small slab fracture on this molar.  Start saving your pennies, that's expensive to pull and yes, it will need to be pulled eventually".

Fan.Freaking.Tastic.

At least it doesn't need to come out now.

Also, no swimming until after July 9th.  Trophy's heart is broken.

First Flyball Meltdown

I'm going to blame the vast majority of this post and this meltdown on the fact that I am not even halfway through a 10 straight day at work schedule, and the fact that work is literally ruining my life.

Tomorrow is 3 weeks until our next tournament.  This tournament was going to be a big and awesome milestone as it marks one full year of competitions in the sport I love with my bestest-best-dog, Trophy.  I was *SO* hoping that Demo would be ready to debut in some way shape or form, but that's not going to be the case.

In fact, right now I don't know if any of my dogs will be running.

I did 3 boxturns with Trophy on Wednesday night after I finished up a very.bad training session with Demo.

3 box turns was just about 3 too many.  Trophy was happy, he was excited to play our game, he ricocheted off the box with 3 picture perfect turns, he didn't have any lameness at all, but he toe started bleeding slightly.  Not a lot, just enough to stain the hair around the hole in his toe burgundy, but enough to freak me out.

I am still planning on taking him to practice tomorrow, but will not be doing anything other than run outs.

Then, there is Pan who has magically respawned not one, but TWO papilloma's on her tongue.  They have to be gone in 3 weeks or I have to pull her.

And then there is Demo. I'm so freaking frustrated with him right now.  The sound of the box triggering tonight freaked him out and he refused to go near it.  He refused to tug. I know that my overall stress is not helping with training him and I'm hoping I can pass him on to a team mate tomorrow to work on turns... but he will not be running in 3 weeks.

So there you have it.  I'm stressed from work and my one great joyful outlet is crashing down around me. hurrah life.

Broken Foot Does Agility

Trophy was pretty awesome at agilities tonight, if I do say so myself.  It was nothing spectacular (except this one part where he saved my butt on a serpentine jump sequence by swerving to take the second jump even though I had passed it and did NOT cue it at all), but we were connected and working together, and he was excited to play the game.

Our usual class set up is thus:  one big 18 obstacle course that we break down in half. So we walk then run through the first 8 obstacles, run them through again to fix major handling errors, then walk and run the second half twice, and then put everything together.  Trophy made it through 4 of the 5 run thus before he came up lame, and it was totally my fault. I spoke with my instructor prior to class starting and we decided to skip the A-frame completely for him, see how he did on the other contact obstacles, and have him just jump 12inches.  I was going to skip the A-frame, I was, but then I cued it in sequence and he, being the awesome partner he was tonight, took the A-frame.  The next run after that (despite me walking him around the A-frame) he starting stutter stepping and was ever-so-slightly lame on that foot (of course he injures his dominant foot, the one he primarily leads and lands on, right?).

He is showing no residual lameness once I got him home, and was trying to convince me to bring out the laser pointer by pinning fireflies to the grass and pointing at them.  Goober dog.

Training plans for him now are to wrap his feet (to get him used to it) at flyball and run him out over jumps.  MAYBE do some isolated boxturns, but like only 5.  Next week at agility I will again run him 12 inch jumps and no A-frame (I don't have any deadlines for him, so i'm not going to push it), and then that weekend do a few full runs with him at flyball and see how his foot holds up.

I had him to the chiropractor yesterday.  His lower neck and middle of his back were out, but his shoulders were fine despite the major hobbling around he was doing last week.  I'm going to try to have him adjusted again before the tournament, but we'll see if I have time to squeeze it in.

Broken Trophy

Trophy really did break himself this time.

Saturday I was waking up from a post-flyball practice nap (hey - running Demo is EXHAUSTING) when my mom runs upstairs and tells me Trophy is bleeding profusely dad is holding him and I need to go RIGHT.NOW.

He had caught himself on the kennel below as he jumped out of his penthouse suite and ripped out his entire nail from the outside toe on his left foot.  I'm not talking broke it off at the base, I'm talking tore the entire thing out of his foot.

So off to my totally awesome vet.  It's a half hour away, but the prices are awesome and the Doctor is awesome and they will always write me a prescription to be filled at Giant Eagle which saves me a TON on antibiotics (since they are FREE!).  So we got him cleaned up and bandaged up and on heavy doses of pain killers.  She said there is some cuticle left, so his nail will most likely grow back.

This is not a staged photo.  He would not look while I upwrapped and then rebandaged his foot today.  Poor baby is squeamish.

So he's laid up for a week. I can unwrap his foot tonight, but since I just rewrapped it this morning to check on the swelling I will probably leave it wrapped until tomorrow.  Then I have to start twice daily cleaning which I am really not looking forward to.

I might be a blessing in disguise to have him take a week off agility.  Last week he was so.not.into.it.  He did everything I asked him to, but at a snail's pace.  I don't know if he was still worn out from the flyball tournament or what, but I'm not terribly upset by him missing class this week.

 Speaking of flyball, our next tournament is in a little over 4 weeks (for some reason I was thinking closer to 3).  He should be able to return to practice two weeks from this past Saturday.  We will bandage his front feet as well as using his booties to help protect that toe and we will see how he does.  If he loses his boxturn in practice I'm going to pull him. He did so well at the tournament two weeks ago with maintaining that I would hate to lose ANOTHER 9 months into re-retraining. 

One of the blogs I read said something about how difficult it is when you have goals for your dogs.  It's so heart breaking when something happens to interrupt those goals.  That's where I'm at right now.  Trophy is my everything dog (until I get Demo up and running), and my stomach drops every time because all of my dreams rest on him.  He's really close to being ready to start competing in agility (just have to nail weave entries and get a little bit better at weaves in general), he's finally putting his heart and soul into flyball racing, and we are hoping to start dockdiving this summer (looking into sponsorships right now).  But my poor dude is such a klutz!  If anything happened to Qwill, Shiner, or Baxter of course I'd be upset, but they are already my "broken" dogs, dogs that I have no major goals with above shower with love daily, so no big deal in the long run if one of them were to lose a toenail or be laid up for a week...

Sometimes dreams and goals suck.



... just realized i should not use phrases like "need to nail our weaves" when my dog has lost a toe nail... ugh. lol.

And small update on Demo's flyball progress, we started teaching him how to pass Saturday.  he's so focused on the tug he didn't care at all (but we also used Trophy and Pan passing into him, so we will see... we will see.)  He only contemplated turning and chasing one time, but that was the first time Pan passed him, he stopped, looked at her and then came right to his tug.  good boy!