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

My oldest dog Riot died yesterday, she was exactly one month shy of 16 years. Together her and I won 2 AKC National Championships, 2 USDAA World Championships, made the World team three times, and took home a first and a second place in the agility classes at World Championships the two years she competed there.

She was a world class athlete and my best best friend. Saying goodbye yesterday was the hardest few hours I have ever spent with a dog. Her nickname was The Babiest Dog, and Jim and I had a song to go with the silly name which like all stupid pet owners, (I am one you see) and we sang it to her all the time.  I am at peace in knowing that she is no longer uncomfortable and suffering from the renal failure she has endured the last three years. I count each one of those extra 1000 days as a blessing, and thank the vets who helped me keep her here.

Here is one of my favorite photos of her at 9 weeks and one of her two days ago still carrying her namesake Riot toy and happily having a game of tug with me.

This should have been a happy week. Clean Run put my Alphabet Drills book on the website. I am officially a published book writer. Scoop is doing better and I am dreaming that we won’t have to have another treatment. All the time off has actually been good for him. He is still an immature boy and we have a long way to go to be a world class team.

Alphabet Drills Book

Kiss your old dogs, treat them like kings and queens, and sing them a special song.

NJG

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