Scoop and Ace and I were in Southern Oregon last weekend teaching at Lisa and Robert Michelon’s agility training center for three days. I parked my RV right next to the training yard and had a really great weekend hanging out with my dogs. Yeah I guess I worked for three days, but teaching friends and long time acquaintances in a beautiful environment does not really feel like work until you are done and tired to the bone. I got some nice photos afterwards, especially of Scoop and my new blue boots:) Thank you Dawn for the Blue Boots and Scoop photo, I love it!

The weather in Oregon in June is more likely to be 100 than it is to be cold and rainy, but we got lucky and hit the middle of the temperature range, a perfect 70 degrees most of the time, and since I am a weather wimp, it was totally absolutely perfect. Is there a place on the planet that has 70 degree weather all year round without humidity and still has sun much of the time? Do they need to have an agility instructor there? Exactly 7 minutes before the seminar was to end Sunday the sky opened and the rain came down in buckets. We all jumped in our cars and were out a there. Well since I am a driving wimp too I only made it three hours to a really nice RV park during daylight so the boys and I could go for a nice long walk along the river in Red Bluff before we hit the sack.

Scoop has ‘snurfled” less every day since his procedure so he got to help out by being a demo dog some of the time. He is so much better that I am totally optimistic that we are on the downside of this disease. His doctor is optimistic and thinks we must have a good combination of drugs for him to be doing so well. I am relieved and happy yet still anxious about the outcome.

Scoop is a really great demo dog. All my dogs have to work for a living, I teach agility and so do they. Some of my dogs have been or are better than others. My first border collie Scud was a great working dog until the demo ended and I started to talk, then he grabbed his toy and dumped it in the nearest handlers lap and of course unless I threatened their expulsion if they played with him, they would happily toss the toy and I would yell for him to come back and lie down and he would till the next moment my back was turned and then the toy/lap/toss/yell thing started all over again. Oh my!

Riot was the best demo dog I ever had and a great helper too. She never interfered with any handler or dog but she loved to watch. She would demo a drill, lie down with her toy, then when a handler went to the line with their dog she would sneak up behind and after the handler dropped the leash she would pick it up and watch the dog run and then deliver it to the finish line where the handler would have to ask Riot for the leash. She would always oblige then silently creep over behind the next dog to run and repeat the scenario. No dog ever gave her the evil eye, or cared that she was watching and taking their leash. She has dog instinct and manners and never took a dogs leash until they left the line. She was my all time perfect working assistant while I taught, and of course great entertainment for all.

Wicked was too silly to demo. She is the sweetest dog there ever was but unless you were actually running her in agility (which she would do with anyone) she could not focus on the job of demoing a little exercise. She was just too silly and would jump around playing with the toy and maybe do what I asked her to do, maybe not. Stage fright? I dunno. Panic was a darn good demo dog, he loved to work but would also chill on the sidelines while he waited for another turn. He was a bit too fast and frantic at times, but he tried as hard as any dog ever could when the reward was to get to do agility.

Ace is not a really happy demo dog. I cannot speak to anyone or talk at all while he is working. He can do anything in agility if he is thinks he is on a course, or he and I are doing a drill on our own, but he is suspicious when I talk to people after or during his working times. It is like he is saying “if we are working why are you looking at them and saying things I don’t understand? Am I doing something wrong, what are you saying? Why are you talking about something we did, while you are playing with me? This is too weird, I can’t work if you are talking to ghosts”.

Scoop worked at a foundation seminar when he was just a few months old. He coped with the audience, the distractions, and the job of doing one thing and being rewarded then sent to a crate to hang out til the next opportunity to work. Somewhere around 5 months old demoing in a class situation became pretty difficult, and not because of the difficulty of the foundation exercise, but that he was too excited after the drill to settle quietly. He would scream when watching other dogs work. When he was older self control started to kick in and he learned to wait quietly for a turn.

Scoop will lie at my feet for the most part, or in his open crate and is not at all naughty unless I am helping a handler perk up their dog with a restrained recall. Scoop will occasionally without invitation join me to “help”. That’s ok, I don’t mind the occasional naughtiness, I am not perfect and neither is he:)

I hope you have a dog that can be by your side while you teach, or accompany you to your workplace and hang out politely. If you have to go to work, always best to do so with a dog by your side.

Nancy

That is the sound Scoop makes while he is trying to forward and reverse sneeze this horrid fungus out of his nose. One week ago Scoop went under the gas for the third time in as many weeks, this time to flood his nasal cavity with anti-fungal poison. I was hoping that the gagging and sneezing would diminish after the treatment, but instead it has blossomed into a ragged sounding head cold.

Scoop is on two oral anti fungus medicines as well, and hopefully this three pronged aggressive approach to killing the fungus will do the trick. The fungus can take hold and start working deep into the bones in the nasal cavity, and it can takes months and possibly years to totally clear up. I have also heard there are some dogs that remain on medicine for life. I so hope that Scoop’s treatment works as planned and that we caught it early enough so that in a couple months this will be behind us.

He will get blood tests monthly to check for any ill effects from the meds, and he is being monitored by his internist who is luckily also my student Dr Helen Hamilton! When she came to class last night she looked him over and checked lymph nodes for swelling and nose for any discoloration or discharge. He obliged her with some reverse sneezes, but that was about it. I am happy to report she watched him jump last night and said I could train a bit since his head does not seem to be in any great discomfort. I thought he jumped really well, yeah!!

During the time all this was coming up he was also jumping pretty funky, I thought I had two things going on, not just this one. Only time will tell but I believe his head was so uncomfortably that he really could not jump well. Landing big 26 inch jumps can’t be pleasant when your head is being eaten by a fungus!

I have no photos or videos of Scoop to share, but Ace and Scoop and I spent last weekend at a 4 day AKC trial and Ace had an almost perfect weekend going 7 for 8 in regular classes,  and also getting 3 of the Excellent fast legs. I like those triple Q things. If it wasn’t for pulling the panel jump on standard round #8 he would have been perfect. I think I jinxed myself because I texted a friend before I ran that I was on my way to 8/8:) I also skipped the practice jump, which in hindsight I might have popped him over a couple times to remind him how high to jump. How do they forget those things anyway?? Uh, they probably don’t and if I hadn’t excelerated out of decel while he was on top of the panel he probably would have kept it up.

Here are Ace’s standard and jumpers runs, thanks Silvina and Agility in Motion for the excellent video footage. Ace looks pretty great to me, this is about the last time he will jump baby 20 inch jumps, we will go to the European Open in July in Austria and of course run in the 26 inch class where Ace earned a bronze medal in 2009, our last time competing at the EO. The EO is one of the most competitive International trials in the world. Just alone in the 26 inch class in 2009 there were more than 300 dogs from almost every European Country, and a total honor to win a medal with that kind of competition. It is an exciting and competitive event and I can’t wait to get there!

I hope your juvenile is healthy and that your trained adult is helping keep you sane and patient for the times that your pup does not oblige!

NJG

Scoop finally got a diagnosis today of his weird snurfling and sneezing, he has a creepy fungus called aspergillus. He will have to have a treatment where he is under anesthesia for about 90 minutes and he is infused with anti-fungal meds. He had his poor little nose and throat scoped today in every imaginable way as I watched the monitor and actually saw the fungal growth which was not present last time he was scoped.

This nasty fungus can actually get into the bones and so Scoop also had another xray to see that it was localized and had not gone further than the back of his nose. It hasn’t! There is still much I don’t know about this disease and the procedures for curing him. For now he can go for walks and play, but no agility. The fungus can be painful so I am also thinking it is the source of his uncomfortable jumping this past month.

This is short, gotta teach a class in 6 minutes! Here is the patient, who is now back home no worse for the wear it seems.

I hope you didn’t have to spend the day at the vet with your pup, but since mine did, I want to thank Dr. Helen Hamilton, Scoop’s internist, for all her great care and understanding as well as all her incredible knowledge and of course all those cool instruments!

Nancy

Scoop, April 2011, USDAA trial

Last night I arrived home from a weeks long adventure. Last weekend we had AKC World Team Tryouts Saturday and Sunday in Hopkins, Minnesota. The excitement was such that on Sunday my stomach was in knots all day just watching the teams compete for a spot on the TEAM! 6 Team members won their way onto the team, and 6 more will be picked this week. What stress, so many great dogs so few spots to fill. The quality of the dogs gets better every year which makes the final choices that much more difficult, but the good news is we have the depth to take great teams to France this year, and many chances for medals.

On Monday afternoon I flew to Atlanta to meet my friends Maureen Robinson & Laura Miller and was whisked away from the airport at 5 PM to the 55th floor of a law office to watch the 6 PM banding of an urban clutch of 4 falcon chicks whose families have made their nest on the top of this beautiful downtown Atlanta office building for many years. How in the world did I end up there? Maureen and Laura are great friends, Laura has a penthouse office in the building, and Maureen is a professional photographer. I just got real lucky! The Georgia Wildlife guys were there to do the banding, I took upside down videos with my new ipad2, (banding peregrines, an Ipad2 video by ME) and we all had a great time watching all the excitement. On Tuesday Maureen and I headed for her beautiful mountain farm in  North Carolina, and by Wednesday I was spending my time watching Maureen practice LONG outruns in preparation for the Blue Grass Sheep Dog Trial this week. (Maureen at Otie’s Knob, a video taken on my new Ipad2)

Wow! A month ago I was teaching in Hawaii and getting stung by man of war jelly fish on Kailua Beach, yeah that’s the beach our president takes his holidays:) I love my life. This evening was spent as many are here on the ranch. I took the dogs for a hike around the property and even though I have lived here since 1976, I never get tired of my fields and hanging with the dogs on a spring evening in the hills. This evening we had lots of nature moments. A killdeer tried to tease us with her broken wing act the entire time I was in one of the fields, yeah yeah, I see you mama kill deer, and I am not going close to the hedgerow by your nest, but keep up the performance, it is very entertaining! Then the dogs and I wandered down the front drive and scared up a big doe that sauntered off when I called the dogs back.

It looked like a full moon out there peeking behind the clouds, even though it was hardly dark and the hawks were still doing their helicopter act hanging over the edges of our cliffs looking for a bedtime snack I guess. Dead quiet out there other than the chirping birds getting ready to head off to bed. I let Scoop come for a walk with us, even though he still is bothered by something in his nose or throat or I don’t know what. He is now on antibiotics 3 times a day to see if there is some kind of infection which is causing the sneezing and hacking. If he is not perfect by Monday, (this afternoon) on Tuesday he goes back to see Dr. Helen our internist, for another scoping. Poor Scoop, poor me! Once again I am home and have time to train him and can’t. BOOGERS.

Riot and Wicked complained bitterly when I left them at the house tonight and just walked Scoop, Ace and Panic. I had already taken them for a trundle around the yard earlier today and thought they were happily resting. Not so. They busted out of the gate when the boys went in, (deaf and almost blind 14+ and 16 year old dogs are allowed these naughty priveleges) and they were rewarded for the effort by getting another short play out in the big yard. Since both of these girls have life threatening illnesses, they sort of get to call the shots, and when they want to tug and run and play they get to do so. So, my evening plans got slightly delayed but I wouldn’t have traded the opportunity for anything. It’s dark here now, the dogs are quiet, Jim is at a soccer game and I might just get off this computer and read a book.

I hope you had as lovely an evening with your pack of dogs as I had with mine.

NJG

Scoop and I spent the day at the vet on Monday while he had his nose and throat scoped to check and see if he had a foreign body caught inside. Scoop started sneezing a few days prior and this was the second visit, this one to be definitive to determine what was causing the sneezing and snurfling he was and still is doing. He had a hard time with anesthesia, vomiting going in and coming out both. I almost regretted that my internist always lets me stay with my dogs for procedures, this was all a bit much and pretty scary to watch. The cool part was watching the actual scoping of the nose on the monitor. Good news bad news, no foreign body.

So why is he sneezing, and sort of wheezing a bit when he runs hard? Allergies are suspected, or he inhaled something that bothered him and while it is gone, he is still uncomfortable. He is on benadryl for a few days and no training for him this week.  I wish that was all that is wrong with him.  He was also jumping poorly on the weekend. I was at the usdaa trial and luckily there was a masseuse and a chiropractor on hand to work on him multiple times. That was on top of the three sessions he had with Dr. Wendy throughout the week to try to find where he was uncomfortable. There was no glaring pain, just some small adjustments. So why was he knocking bars and adding steps here and there?

No answers yet, but he has a couple weeks off now to see if any small issues resolve. In the midst of all this he got his USDAA AD on the weekend. I only ran him in the standard ring, and only after the body workers to say he was not in any discomfort. But he obviously is tight somewhere, most likely up in his head neck area which is where they concentrated some of their work. He had a nice standard run both days, hitting his frames, with great weaves and nice jumping.

I still took him for regular exercise after he recovered from the procedure. The mustard is in full bloom at my house, and the dogs love to run through the deep stuff.

I am headed to Minnesota today for World Team Tryouts. I will be back next week and I hope to find that Scoop is back to his normal bubbly self, but that the snurfling is all gone!

I hope that your novice dog is sound and healthy and you are busy training instead of sitting on the bench like we are.

NJG