We've had a busty October. We went away for Thanksgiving weekend and my guys got to be farm dogs. They loved it. Rylie may have loved it a bit too much because several days after we got back he decided he couldn't put any weight on his right front foot. X-rays or physical exam didn't reveal anything. The vet felt it might be a strained shoulder (which is what I had been thinking). He was to be on extremely limited activity for two weeks. That honestly wasn't hard for the two days that he was walking on three weeks. We did daily massage, twice daily epsom salts wraps and he wore his back on track jacket. On the second day I noticed he was putting a bit of weight on his leg at lunch time and by supper time you wouldn't have known he'd ever been hurt. After that limiting his activity became more difficult. I managed for a week and then called the vet back and got the go ahead to start building him up to normal activity.
Last Friday we had a trial and since he seemed sound I let him run all four runs he was entered in. Saturday morning he was walking three legged again. It only lasted a couple of hours but he clearly isn't 100% healed so we are being careful.
The trial was at a lovely indoor venue. Max was quite worried about the whole thing. He left me to sniff which he hasn't done for a very long time. He was very slow off of his start lines all day which generally means he is stressed. When he was running well I was late with my cues so no Q's for us. I thought we had worked through this issue (the stress on the start line) but I guess it's still a work in progress.
Rylie was just so darned excited to do agility that he was a bit wild. He tried his best to do what I asked but sometimes his body just had more momentum than he could handle. I always have fun with him though and don't have to worry if he is too stressed.
During the month Max got a certificate for his Masters Agility Dog of Canada. I hadn't realized he had earned it at the last trial we were at - cool.
