On the subject of aging for the dog agility blog event I realized I have rules to share about competing with older dogs….

Old Dog Rules

1. Your old dog is going to cost you at least $10,000 before they leave you. Start saving now.
2. Once in a while you will get a free ride with a dog that has few health issues and leaves you too soon, that will make up for the dog that costs you twice $10,000.
3. If your old dog is a pain in the butt he is going to live a really long time.
4. Your heart dogs are never, ever, ever, going to live long enough. Never.
5. I find nothing more enjoyable than running my older well trained dogs in agility. I know them and they know me and we can just hit cruise control together.
6. It is more important to keep your old dog fit than it is to keep them trained. Daily aerobic exercise is a necessity not a once a week treat. The catch is that agility can help keep them fit, train your older dog at home if they are still having fun and they are in shape for the job.
7. Every time you train your youngster you should feel a twinge of guilt if you don’t do something fun with your old ones as well. A few minutes of tugging and some trick training go a long ways in making your old dog still feel special.
8. It is never fair to have a titling goal with an older dog. Once they hit an “age” throw out the goal for another MACh or a Silver whatchamacallit and compete only for the joy of it. Titling legs should be a pleasant surprise not a week in-week out mission.
9. Only compete with your old dog if she still gets excited on the way to the ring.
10. Weave poles, tight turns and extreme deceleration skills can fade with old age as your dog learns to be sensible and protect her body, or does not have the flexibility she once had. Adjust your handling and know those days are coming instead of being frustrated when your older dog fails a challenge.
11. Get your old dogs’ eyes checked often and be aware of their vision limitations.
12. Retire your old dog from agility when people are still saying, “She is HOW old? She still looks so great!”
13. Never say “my (old) dog deserves to have such and such title”, or go to one more National event. Dogs only deserve love, attention, exercise, play and delicious food.
14. If you have ever felt like you have to “drag” your old dog around the agility course you are probably right. Know when it is time to hang up the agility leash.
15. It may be the hardest thing you will ever do but you must be brave enough to help your old dog leave your side with dignity when the time comes and to keep them from another moment of pain or misery.
16. Don’t be tempted by the latest technological, surgical, or chemical advances in keeping your dog here on earth a moment longer than they should be. It is never ok to make your best friend uncomfortable in order to spend a few more days or weeks with them.
17. Sing your old friend a song and give them a kiss every day.
18. Old dogs will rule your life, they will give you countless sleepless nights, and bring you tears too many to count. They will torture you at times with ailments small and large.
19. When you think you can’t go on, refer to rule #20.
20. Enjoy every moment you get to spend with your old dog and remember all they have done for your life, your career and your sanity.

Read many other blogs on aging here…

http://dogagilityblogevents.wordpress.com/

My oldest dog Panic is in the photos, he was about 3 in these shots and is almost 13 now. He retired at 7 years of age after epilepsy ended his career. He loved agility more than anything else he ever played at; so much so that the agility is what brought his arousal state so high it triggered his seizures. He still loves to do tunnels and and the occasional set of weaves, and even after 4 years without a seizure, and one year off all medications, I am still very careful not to get him too excited when we play at his favorite pastime for a few minutes. I treasure every memory of running him full out as fast as he could go, especially in the center ring at Scottsdale in the Steeplechase Finals where he took a second and a third. NJG

I have been home from the Agility World Championships just over a week but it feels like a month. The schedule went something like this… unpack bags, write CR article all one day, more desk work, herding lessons, more herding, more playing with my friend from North Carolina Maureen Robinson, many hours of desk & email catch-up, jumping workshop, pack the RV, drive 4 hours to Yosemite, hike and play 2.5 days then drive 4 hours home, unpack, dog massages, obsess on getting ready for power paws camp, many hours of teaching, camp work, teach, camp work , teach, swim & walk dogs & repeat as necessary! Whew.

Looking at the schedule it reads like a lot of play time, wonder why I am dead tired and feel like I have been working too many hours:)

The Agility World Championships were incredible. Being with Ashley and Luka every step of the way to their Gold Medal was amazing, no less though than the wonderful celebrations we had afterwards. Check out the video of Ashley’s Gold Medal run and trip to the podium as well as Tori’s jumpers run which immediatley preceeds it on this video.

I am very proud of our team and all they accomplished. Tori, the totally hip and poised 19 year old from Florida with her perfect little border collie Rev won the Team Jumping class and were just a dropped bar away from an individual gold medal! Barb Davis had a phenomenal 2^nd place finish in jumping and JD and Tantrum took a 4^th in team jumping. There was lots’ more good stuff, check it all out!

http://www.akc.org/events/agility/world/2011/placements.cfm

Today I was entered in a trial and thought better of attending….too much paperwork and fighting off my annual cold. I am going out to pack the car though and get ready to go to one of our only local agility trials for the next couple days. Unfortunately without Scoop entered in a single class. I wish I thought he was on the mend, but after another vet examination, I am left with still more questions about why he still has some discomfort in his rear assembly. I have 2 orthopedist appointments coming up, surely one won’t be able to convince me what is really going on, and since I am planning on wanting a second opinion, it is already scheduled. Did I mention that I am completely obsessed with getting to the bottom of what might be ailing this dog or any other I have ever owned? I hate not knowing if they are in any kind of discomfort. The latest theory is that even though Scoop’s hips looked good in radiographs, there might still be a problem. Sigh. Before I left for Europe 3 weeks ago I decided to lay Scoop off from all field running and of course agility. He swam and hung out in the yard, but no other exercise. The first jumping in three weeks didn’t go very well, even after the break, and we are on hiatus until I have answer. I am slightly regretting the  herding lessons I took with my friend Maureen Robinson last week, now that I think he is still broken, but on the flat he is sound as a dollar and raring to go and we had soooo much fun.

I will put up some great Yosemite and World Championships photos as soon as I get my hands on them.

I hope you are headed for a fun weekend of agility or hiking or adventuring with your dogs, I know I am looking forward to this weekend with mine!

Nancy

We have been in a training doldrum, his physical health still a big question mark. A month ago I wrote that I thought we were ready to really start working hard, but the last few weeks have left me with even less confidence on his health. I haven’t felt that he was sound enough to really work. But today I am happy to write about Scoop.

For the first time in well over 6 months I had a great jump training session with Scoop last night. We were just fooling around on a small setup I used for a workshop yesterday. I heard a tick or two of bars but for the most part Scoop looked great jumping. He could collect, he did his serps just like he used to do, and he could threadle without crashing into the wings of the jumps. He drove down the closing  lines with no added steps and flew over the last jump in each sequence. We had so much fun and his jump style looked soft and round and not at all uncomfortable. I didn’t want to stop we were having so much fun. I was almost afraid to go to the field today, worried he wouldn’t be the same. But tonight I went out for a short jumping and aframe session  and he was great on all of it. Yeah for us.

Weeks before Scoop’s fungus was diagnosed back in May, he was starting to have all sorts of jumping and contact issues. I knew it wasn’t just behavior, it was physical. Why would a dog who was seeming to progress at a steady pace in his training suddenly totally backslide.  In the middle of trying to find the solution from vets, and therapists, up popped the fungus which I then hoped was the real issue since we were stuck with it and that was a REAL diagnosis. Scoop has been recovering from the fungus just fine, but the physical issues and his jump style were totally changed. I felt like he was broken but no one found anything drastically wrong with him.

The past week, which was no different from many, he was seen by two of my vets, two times each. He had needles twice, once with electricity applied, he got adjusted and poked and prodded and worked on in the lower back and pelvic area. He seemed tight and maybe a bit off in his pelvic region, but not enough to account for his continued crappy jumping. In desperation I contacted my human massage therapist that has never worked on dogs before. He agreed to see him and we had two sessions this week and another one is scheduled for a couple days from now. He found all sorts of pain in his upper thighs, old scar tissue in the muscle and lots of muscle adhesions which need to get worked out. Do I have a new dog? I guess only time will tell. I do think I have more of a real diagnosis and hopefully also a way to reach the heart of the problem. The massage therapy along with acupuncture and adjustments I hope will put us on the right track this time.

I love my dog. He seems to love me and love training. He has the best feet, a handsome head, and a silly streak a mile long. He is a talker and a cuddler. He has some of the nicest qualities of any dog I have had and so far he loves all people and all dogs! After training he will send to the dog bathtub and totally immerse himself and stay there calmly cooling off, but he is not obsessed with the water like many dogs I have owned. He loves to swim and will stay in the pool exercising, carrying his toy, but he does not bite the water or intake gallons, a big no no if you want to exercise your dog in a pool daily. He seems toy crazed, but is totally controllable around toys. He carries a toy in his mouth on every walk, and never interferes with the other dogs. He is quick twitch when it comes to behaviors. He takes positions fast, and he is not stalky. His stays seem to be great (now:)) He is in many ways a trained agility dog. We should be in the ring competing with all his siblings!

Will we back there soon? Time will tell.

I hope you and your young dog are well on the road to success and earning lots of ribbons in the agility ring and I equally hope that I am just a step behind you.

NJG

A note about my massage therapist. This is the same therapist that totally cured my plantar fasciitis some months ago. I had two intensive massages of my feet to knock down all the tightness and muscle adhesions. Those first sessions lasted two hours each but at the end I was pain-free and remain so. He is a miracle worker and I will never again believe that plantar fasciitis isn’t totally curable with therapy instead of the incorrect stretching I was doing along with trying all sort of gimmicks and orthotics which created even more pain. He is in San Jose and if you want his contact info, for yourself or your dog, write me directly at powerpaws@aol.com.

Scoobie went in to get scoped a couple days ago and had another treament for Aspergillis. He also got his hips and head radiographed. The head shot was to see if the fungus had traveled further up into his head. GREAT NEWS! On scoping there was no visual sign of the fungal growth in his nose, and the radiograph showed that it has not traveled into his head.

Scoop’s internist decided to do another treatment even though the fungus was not visible.  A dog’s nasal area looks like folds in a piece of fabric, with all these little hills and valleys and tunnels. The nasty little fungus could have been hiding in one of those little crevasses. The biggest trauma in the treatment is putting him under anesthesia for a few hours. The actual treatment takes about 90 minutes while they fill up the cavity with fungus poison and then roll him around a few times to make sure the meds get to every surface.

Dr. Helen Hamilton explained that the fungus is really slow growing, and the body does not really try to fight it off. But unfortunately once it takes hold it just moves in like a visit from a bad relative! Scoop is still on two anti-fungal drugs and will remain on them for many more months I suspect.

And more good news; his hips looked really great. How convenient that my orthopod and internist share an office and I could get two procedures done at the same time! He sure seemed to take a long time to wake up, but I am an absolute expert at sitting on my vet’s floor with my dogs for these events. I hate to think how many hours I have spent of my life in those back rooms. 4 years of chemo with Scud, and a long succession of minor and major surgical repairs and fixes and x-rays and so on with all my dogs over the last 25 years  of working with the same vets!

While I have been lightly training Scoop on and off for the past 4 months while we have been dealing with and treating the fungus, it has not been with much conviction or passion. For some weeks before the diagnosis Scoop was just sort of “off”. I was struggling with his A-frame training, he was pulling lots of bars and just plain didn’t look good on jump drills. There were lots of other little signs that he wasn’t right, but until the snurfling started I had no idea what it was. I am hoping that all the discomfort in his head was what was causing a variety of training issues. So, now on to getting this juvenile finished with his training. I have been cutting him lots of slack of course, blaming his behavior or lack of it as the case may be on the fungus. I haven’t pushed him to do very much, not really knowing if he was uncomfortable. BUT, I am on a mission now and hope to have time to share stories about Scoop Training, Take 2.

This morning we started the day with a long walk around the fields. After breakfast we worked bounce jumps, 5 in a row, 22 inch height, 8 foot distance and then I put up a straight grid of 5 jumps at 26 inches, with bumps on the ground in between so that his one stride on the ground in between was even. We did some decel front cross and “flip your hips” training for a few minutes as well. He cooled off with a swim in the pool afterwards and I think looked like he could go do it all again afterwards.

Stay tuned for stories of a new and improved and hopefully trained border collie named Scoop.

I hope you are having a great training weekend with your youngster, I sure am with mine!

NJG

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