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.