That is what I am experiencing at the moment with Scoop’s health. For almost a month I have been actively training him, and we have not really had one bad day. YAHOO! Scoop’s final diagnosis it seems is another one of those health problems (like aspergillis) I never really wanted to learn about. Scoop has “bunchy muscles” I am told. The MRI and ultrasound and multiple x-rays all told a story of good structure and nothing to even consider that can be seen on a diagnostic machine. The ultrasound given by an incredible radiologist, Dr. Craig Long in Sacramento, showed no tears of any of the muscles in the rear, Ilio psoas just fine and all the rest as well.  So, since he really had no injury to rehab, we went back to training.

What in the world are bunchy muscles I ask? Apparently not the kind of long and soft kind I want. When I look at him it just does not sound right. He is lean and long and doesn’t look like he has some kind of chunky muscle builder muscles. Actually he does seem to be one big long muscle, but I thought that was supposed to be good. Scoop is moving better, jump freely, and not showing the obvious discomfort of the past 9 months. I think this is because he now gets weekly or semi-weekly deep tissue massages by my human therapist.

This is the same masseuse that cured the foot ailment that almost derailed MY career last year. Each week Scoop is found to have incredible tightness and knots in different areas and the therapist is slowly working his way through eliminating them. I don’t know if we will reach a point that maybe a monthly therapy will be enough to keep him moving well, but that is what I am dreaming about.

I know he is getting better because in the past Scoop had gigantic bar knocking issues, and seemed to never be able to hit a weave entry, for this past month he has rarely taken a bar, and maybe only missed a couple weave entries, and I can tell you that I am trying hard to find every tough one there is to train.

I know the weave issues have not been training ones, he simply could not bend his body around the first gate. Especially on 90 degree entries, on a left hand entry he would make the first gate and have to skip the second. On a right hand wrap he could not get wrapped around the first pole, he always entered the second gate. The difference now is totally remarkable. And his A-frame at the moment is the one I dreamed of when I started training. Scoop could just never seem to get the oomph over the top of the frame that would drive him deep into yellow. I am asking the universe to let me have this dog, this frame, these weaves and his nice jump style!

Scoop is wild right now in training. I am having to work as hard on all the foundation skills as the agility work. After all the months of hit and miss training his excitement to be back in the field really working has him almost “off his stick” as they say. Stays and lineups and self-control are all high on our training list.

I took some photos of Scoop at Precision Body Therapy with his therapist, Edward.  Scoop seems to really love the sessions and actively participates at times stretching into the work. Interesting to observe the interaction of dog and therapist. I am sure Scoop knows that Edward is helping him.

Hope your juvenile agility dog gets to experience this kind of great therapy at some point in his life. I for one can’t wait till I can go back to spending my massage money on ME:)

NJG

Seven of them walked past my office window this morning so I snuck out quietly and stood behind the redwood tree to snap a few photos. They blend into the surroundings so well, they are perfectly camouflaged. The dogs fuss at them from behind the fence sometimes but they don’t seem to care. Occasionally when the dogs are all put up for a meal or hanging in the house, the turkeys fly into the dog yard to investigate the dogs’ refuge. Our local wildlife are very used to the dogs and cats being safely tucked behind the fences and they meander within a few feet of the dogs totally confident that the wire will keep them separated. We don’t see the turkeys everyday, and it is such a coincidence that they came for a visit today as last night I watched a great Nature show on TV called My Life as a Turkey. If you see it on the tube,
don’t miss this really interesting program about imprinting and living with a flock of wild turkeys.

I got home last night from the 3 day AKC Show at Rancho Murietta.  Ace and I had a good time hanging with friends and running in the trial. Ace got three doubles and a triple, AKC lingo for qualifying in agility, jumping and FAST all on the same day. Our only error all weekend was not qualifying in one of the FAST classes offered. I put too much power and speed on the send and overshot a tunnel. Totally fine, I really only do FAST classes to get on the contacts if they have them as I show so seldom I like to take advantage of the opportunity to train them in a ring setting. “The dark arts”  as I call the skill required to be competitive in gamblers and FAST classes is not really my forte, that is my husbands specialty! Jim and I like to joke that he teaches them to send, then I teach them all to get reeled back in.

Hmmm… that sounds like job security!

I found a cute pic of Scoop from exactly one year ago, happily holding of one his favorite toys.

Scoop stayed home with Jim, I didn’t want to be tempted to take him for a hike or get him revved up watching agility and not be able to do anything with that pent up energy. We are headed back to the neurologist and orthopedist offices this week on the continuing search for a specific diagnosis for his discomfort. In the meantime he is just hanging out in the house bored unless we play calm clicker training games.

I was helping a friend this week to clicker train a retrieve on her sheltie. Have I mentioned that I think all dogs should have a manufactured retrieve? There are some skills that are so important to making agility training easier, and a good retrieve is one of them. If you can train a dog, you can train a retrieve, I see absolutely no reason for anyone to have the excuse that their dog won’t play with toys so they obviously can’t retrieve. And I would ask, what does toy play or tugging have to do with the perfect retrieve of any item you designate?

Well???

I hope you have as great retrieve on your youngster as I do on mine, and if you don’t, well get on it!

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 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