And it begins...

SoBe went to see Dr. Keesling today, she is a Veterinarian who specializes in PT.  

We were able to actually isolate the issue today, SoBe has a pulled Iliopsoas muscle. Her symptoms make perfect sense with the diagnosis, the reason SoBe has been on again, off again three-legged lame which of course has scared the crap out of me.

I have been worried sick that it is a knee/cruciate injury, knowing that it is a muscle pull, although a major muscle is definitely a relief!

When the muscle spasms, it causes her to pull her leg up in order to get relief. We are looking at about a 6 week rehab program, in which we will be gradually easing her back into her active lifestyle. Huge sigh of relief!!!

I had a busy day today and did not get much of a chance to train dogs but I did take Vandal down to the training building before one of my lessons showed up and we played on the plank.

Truly Vandals plank work should begin with the plank on the floor but he is quite the brave young man and he really thought the plank on the floor was an unnecessary obstacle so I put it up on the edge of a 12" table.

Doing this turned out to be very beneficial for 2 reasons, first he really enjoyed running down the elevated plank but we also got a first look at the table and how much fun it can be.

I started by encouraging Vandal up on to the table and rewarded him with treats and play when he hopped up. There was no duration involved just fun!

To introduce the plank I moved down the plank with him and rewarded him for running all the way through it. He was very quick to figure out what I wanted and within a rep or 2 I was able to place a target out about 3 feet from the bottom of the plank and send him to it. You will see this on the video, yes another video!!!

 

The most interesting part of this whole exercise was the fact that although I had placed a couple of really yummy treats on the "target" he ran down the plank, grabbed the target and took off! I continued to put treats on the target plate but made sure that I got there as fast as I could so that after he actually ate the treat we played tug with the target plate. 

I am totally fine with the fact that he wants to play with the target plate, play is always good and of course I do not have intentions of using the target for very long.

The plank was quite bouncy and although it did not bother Vandal even a little bit, not every dog is going to be quite so receptive to that much motion, so use caution if you are trying this yourself.

On the same yet slightly different note, a question was posed regarding my running contact decision. 

The question was in reference to how I will handle a running contact in a gamble situation? Well, a lot of the success in running contacts has to do with the handlers physical cues as well as verbals, once my dog is truly understanding the concept of "running" the contacts which generally involve driving to obstacles straight ahead I will spend an equal amount of time training turns off of the contacts.

This will involve asking Vandal to turn both left and right as well as doing 180 degree turns to obstacles as he runs off of the contact obstacle. I have to be sure that my physical position/cue supports the direction I am asking Vandal to go.

Wally has running contacts and has managed to Q on several Masters level gambles that involved contacts, it can be done :-)

Speaking of Wally, as long as I have gotten so darn good at "up" loading these videos, here is a video of a standard run from the Colorado Kennel Club AKC trial a couple of weeks ago :-) Enjoy!

Tomorrow, Merger, Beep!, and, Vivid are going to play with Sheepies! It is supposed to be the most beautiful day tomorrow and hopefully we will get in a great walk, sheepies and some serious quality agility training with Merger, Wally and Vandal. I will let you all know how the sheep wrangling goes!