The Last 3 Weeks

Well Christmas has come and gone and we are now in the brand new year. Christmas wasn't a great time as Tess hasn't been well to the point where I thought I might lose her. She lost coordination in her legs so couldn't walk properly and was falling over. The vet suspected a neurological problem but before we proceded with any further treatment he wanted to check that a lump on her back wasn't cancerous so she went in for a biopsy christmas eve. She was only supposed to be in there a few hours but she reacted quite badly to the anaestetic and took ages to come round which meant she had to stay in overnight, the vet was quite worried about her. I picked her up Christmas day and luckily she was ok and the lump isn't cancerous. Next had to decide whether to put her through mri scan but as this would also require a lengthly anaestetic I've decided against it as it would only (maybe) show the problem and the vet doesn't think that whatever is wrong with her would be easily fixed. So I had her on steriod tablets for a week to see if this would reverse some of her coordination problems and to be quite honest I'm not sure if it has worked or not. They made her very sick and she was very ill over the weekend so I took her off of them. She is fine again now and oddly her front legs seem alot better, she is not knuckling over like she was and seems less wobbly on them. I'm guessing this is an effect of the tablets but I didn't see any improvement whilst she was actually on them?!?! Maybe she is just being more careful. So I think I need another chat with my lovely vet. I'm happy that she hasn't deteriorated any further and she is perfectly happy in herself, I just hope we can keep her that way. I'm not ready to lose my princess, she isn't even 12 yet :-(.

Asher has kinda suffered abit over this time too, It has all felt a bit wrong walking him without Tess so he hasn't had as much exercise as usual and then just as I was getting to grips with the whole walking 1 dog thing he took a chunk out of the top of his paw, he is totally kamikaze when he's out and runs full pelt in to everything so he's always cutting himself but this was quite deep and kept opening when he ran so i had to rest him for a week meaning we missed agility training last week. We've started getting back in to a regime in the last few days and I finally did some weave and wall training with him this afternoon. He was really good but totally manic and i had to move the weave poles like everytime he went through them as he was moving them so much. His wall work was great, he was taking off from further away and pushing further off the wall, he was also achieving the height I wanted without my hand with the ragger in position and then he was driving off the wall to get his ragger on the ground about 10ft away.

Ball-istics started training again on Sunday but i couldn't go as I had to work, I was gutted but apparently they all did really well. I'll be there this Sunday to push the training forward another step. I'm planning on putting the first jump in in front of the box but still not loading a ball as i don't want to start loading until we actually have our new box. Were going to put netting in a tear drop shape around the box area to the 1st jump so that the dogs have plenty of space (and it allows for errors in my ball throwing!) but do actually have to straighten up as the plan is that when they jump on to the box I will throw the ball over the 1st jump so that they really spring off the box and drive over the jump going back. Then we can start to shape the turn by altering the position and height of the prop. Hopefully won't be too long til we get the new box, feels like we could be pushing on alot quicker but that is holding us back. Although I'm sure taking it slow will pay off in the end.

Agility training tomorrow aswell, really looking forward to it :-)