Monday, July 14, 2008

YEA, good news for Breeze

so this week we have had some great news with Breeze. She has made amazing progress and has 20 degrees more movement in her hips, her bad hip has 150 degrees and anything over 150 is considered normal. She has also lost half an inch in the good hip and gained half an inch in her bad hip so they are totally equal now, AMAZING. I got big kudos for sticking to the exercises, and I am so happy with how things are going for Breeze. So the plan is to continue with what we have been doing, restrict her activity for another couple of weeks then very slowly see what she can tolerate. Maybe agility???? Who knows, we will see how she holds up. The vet thinks the biggest problem will be how she can handle tight turns, dog walks things like that. Sooo Breeze is amazing doing her ball and disc work, her core strength is just building so much and when I do her massages and stretches her little body just feels so well conditioned. Her gait looks great, who would have thought after this long with such a downhill spiral that things would be turning around so much?

Lizzie is doing well, just seems to be settling more every day, I think a little time off has been good, hopefully our progress will hold up once we start training again. I took her to class last week and she had to sit in a crate watching everyone for a few hours, once they left I was able to let her out and she did just some awesome work and was just interested in staying with me and working, whooo hooooo. It was pretty awesome to see. She is just turning into such a sweet heart. Clicker training just is so good for her. Maturity seems to be good for her too, LOL.

Chloe has sort of got the short end of the stick and hasnt done much work this week, she is such a sweet heart but she does get ignored at times, so working on not letting that happen.

Biggest news of the week is we have a little house guest. We are hosting a little dog -a border collie- that had an FHO repair awhile back and is still not using her leg much so we are doing some of Breezes exercises with her. She is a sweetie and I hope that the exercises and stretches will help her walk more normally on ALL of her legs. Funny how she really has taken a liking to the other border collies, like they all know their own breed. She is a little lovebug, and loves to play and a bit on the wild side, and also not clicker trained and not terribly food motivated so I am working on that.

Our best news is my super awesome instructor will be back this week, that might be bad because I will have to start running around in this horrible heat, but I will be so happy to see her. I have also been subbing in classes for her, so now I actually get to be a student again. I have loved teaching and there are some really cool students, but it is hard to teach and still train your own dogs as much as I normally would. Also I have learned so much subbing, I really see a lot of things by being an observer of other people and their dogs and trying to communicate observations to the people, and having to have some confidence in what I have said and noticed. I am sure going to be rusty running my own courses now though. I think everyone who does training for awhile should do a little time teaching, really sharpens your techniques and opinions and really helps to clarify things in my opinion.

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