Vetchecks

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Leanne

Dylan has passed his vet check, so his jumping problem is almost entirely a psychological one. He has some tightness in his back but nothing major, and is probably just from a hard summer of competition. His ground movement is good – as it always has been – and his eyesight is fine.

I say almost entirely, because Dylan is getting anxious and tense, and that means he is tightening his muscles. By locking already sore* muscles he becomes less flexible and less comfortable when jumping.

This summer has been a tough one, and Dylan has had more stressful experiences than any dog should have had. We have a very small UKA show this weekend, and I am hoping that the quiet venue will help him relax. I can also train in the ring, so that should help as well.

*“Sore” is overstating, really. Tight is a better word but I feel like I’m repeating myself.

Midweek

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Leanne

Gentle introduction back to Wednesday night flyball training this week, Kim did five minutes of teacher-dog work with the starters and then Dylan did five minutes of boxwork. He is getting better and he is trying very hard, and hopefully if we can secure an upright/flat fronted box in the next few months we can start retraining over the winter. Mollie did ten minutes of crazy eyes interference, because she’s a bad dog.

After we were done with the flyball, Kim and Dylan both had their backs done by Kath the lovely chiropractor. Dylan needed more work than Kim, but neither had really major adjustments so they’re only down for a couple of days and should be fine for the weekend. Kim just needed some minor tweaks to her back, but really did need her hamstrings working on. That has probably been contributing to her lack of jumping power over the past month or so. Dyl has never needed an adjustment before, so it was a new experience for him! I think he found it quite relaxing once he realised that he wasn’t going to be allowed to join Bailey and Roxy in their football game and just had to stand still. We’ll see if it makes a difference to his agility next week!

Mollie, being built like a tank, is absolutely fine. She inflicts damage on others – dogs, people, flyball jumps, trees, dry stone walls. Quite a lot like a tank, really, she has the “through things, not around things” mentality.

It also looks like we might have found a new hydrotherapy pool, which would be really great for the collies if we can make it. It’s quite a trek to get there unfortunately but good hydro pools are hard to find. It’s not as important in the summer when the dogs can swim in the reservoirs (supervised, nobody panic!) and mill ponds, but getting somewhere sorted for the winter will be great.

Acceptable Risk

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Leanne

I have been thinking on this for a while, after a bit of a twitter debate with friends. Two horses very sadly died this year in the Grand National, leading to a whole bunch of people to say the race is too dangerous and should immediately cease. I ought to begin by saying I don’t bet on the National (apart from office sweepstakes) and I do think that there are further things that can be done to improve the safety of the horses and jockeys (limiting the field would be a start, because 40 is a ridiculous number that is just asking for trouble), but I have and probably will continue to defend its existence as a steeplechase. I don’t want to get too hung up on the Grand National though, otherwise this will be a really boring post for most people.

The biggest risk with the National – and I promise, this has a dog-related point – is that there are always hopeless long shots entered into the race. Yes, they have a qualifying procedure, but most owners and trainers know if they’re horse can make the trip or not and will enter them regardless, because they think there’s an off chance they’ll get the opportunity to say they’ve won this race (plus the massive prize money won’t go amiss either). They’re willing to risk their horse being injured, or at worst, die, because there is a chance for glory.

But we see this same mentality in dog sports, don’t we? Ok, the risk of death is almost non-existent. Likewise, there is no financial gain (usually). But there is also no drug-testing and little regulation of lame or unsound dogs running. Thinking honestly, how many people to do you know that are normally sane, compassionate and reasoned, but have run their dog on Metacam* for a Final, or Qualifier? I can think of a dozen at least. I know a lot of flyballers who have Metacam in their cars, just in case their dog goes lame after the morning’s racing and they need a quick dose so they can flyball in the afternoon, particularly for the Champs. People get so caught up on the need to win the big events that they will sacrifice their dog’s health for that one day or weekend.

A more directly obvious comparison with the National (barring death risk and prize money extremes, and if you squint quite a lot) is Crufts. We train our dogs to the best we can, but we still all desperately try to qualify for an event that we know has an unsuitable environment for agility. We know the majority of dogs do not run well on carpet, and that the equipment has a tendency to slip (weaves, tunnels). The injury risk is much greater, the crowds/stress is much greater, but we still try and qualify for it.

Tangent: how many people will run their dogs outdoors when it’s raining? I know this horrifies plenty of the American handlers, but we do it regularly.

I wonder what level of risk is acceptable? (Why yes, often my trains of thought are sometimes tangential and weird; how did I get from the Grand National to this?) Dogs running on medication is a no, for me. I’d run Kim at Crufts again but I wouldn’t try to qualify Dylan. I’ll run in the rain but only to a certain point, if there is a torrential downpour and the contact equipment in particular looks slippery, I’ll pull my dogs (I’ll admit I don’t like running in the rain either as well, so that might have something to do with it).

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, or what my final point is. Sorry if you just wasted 10minutes reading all that.

*I’m using Metacam as my example drug of choice, but only because it seems to be the most common. Some people prefer different painkillers, some go with homeopathy options like arnica. I hope it’s obvious that whatever the drug is, is irrelevant.

**The level of risk with regards to the National will always be fluid, unfortunately, due to the fragile nature of horses. No deaths would be a good place to start, but of course horses with broken legs (usually) have to be euthanized, so do we go to no broken legs? Risk of a broken leg on flat racing is still pretty risky. Breed horses with stronger legs, but lose the speed? The risk of our hardier agility dogs getting a broken leg from agility is also somewhat risky, but of course dogs with broken legs are adaptable and can go back to what they did after recovery. I think it’s fair to say my comparison throughout this post is therefore tenuous at best, but it is what got me thinking so I included it anyway.

Run & Training

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Leanne

I have discovered a slight flaw in my well-considered fitness and conditioning plan, in that Kim is too smart for her own good. She now refuses to run for the first toy now, and will only run for the second, meaning Mollie is doing twice as much work. I probably should have seen that one coming, to be fair! Dylan has tried this a couple of times as well, but Dyl is easier to outwit, usually by pretending to have three toys, one toy, throwing it in different directions, etc, whereas Kim doesn’t fall for those kind of mean tricks. Mollie is clueless and still runs after every toy every time.

Kim hasn’t been agility training for 5-6 weeks, partially because we’ve redistributed people at agility training and now there isn’t as much time for me to run 2-3 dogs in the session. As I just have Dyl there at the moment (I haven’t trained with Jet for months now, but that’s the disadvantage of borrowing a dog!) I can concentrate solely on him, but because we only get limited chances to use the equipment, I have to be more focussed with what we do. Less impulsiveness on my part, more planned training.

Because we have more dogs in the session now, it’s also given me a chance to work on keeping Dylan relaxed whilst the other dogs work. Lots learnt in the past few weeks about stress and adrenalin levels, and I’ve tried to spend more time observing what the dogs are actually doing and then acting to encourage them to be calmer. I can’t eliminate stress completely but I do want the dogs to respond in a way that tells me they’re in control of the situation and handling the stress in a positive way. I’ve adjusted the way I handle a couple of things with Dylan and so far so good. It’s been quieter anyway!

I’m just torn at the moment on Dylan’s waits in the ring at Hare’n’Hounds this weekend; at training, I have a strict break-and-you’re-out policy, where we walk (cheerfully) away from the equipment if he breaks his wait. He has 98% solid waits at training, but no wait at all at competitions. I know that I need to follow through with this at shows, and consistently, and I also know that as I want to stay in n G5 for a while yet it makes perfect sense to do this now (at this show especially because I have Kim and Jet so I still get a chance to run some courses). I know that Dylan only does this because of my poor training. But it’s still very hard to do it, because I just tend to counter it with the “well I manage with Kim” argument in my head. Which is a stupid argument! I’ll see if I can be brave enough to walk away this weekend.

Summer

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Leanne

My pledge to try and blog more often is currently not really working out. I do have the very good excuse, like the rest of the country, that there has been the warm, hazy hint of summer around and we’ve been basking in what might be the only sun we see all year. We seem to have bypassed spring completely, and gone straight from minus temperatures to coasting in the high teens.

The fitness training is working well so far. We’re four sessions in and I wasn’t really expecting to see a difference yet, but the older girls especially are showing signs of real improvement. Kim is looking especially good, she’s running faster and also recovering faster. The next step will be to add another session after a second 5-minute break, but with the unseasonably warm weather it seems better to wait until it cools down again. We can’t avoid it in summer but at least they have had chance to acclimatise by then!