Saturday, March 19, 2011

March Training Update


 I showed Ty in Utility once in February. I'm very happy to report that she earned her 2nd leg with a solid 194.5 performance, and even won a runoff for 4th place in Utility B. The only thing that gave me any anxiety was that just as she arrived at her glove #1, she whipped around and looked at me. I had a very brief "Oh, no, don't go to glove #2!" thought dash through my head, but she recovered and turned back around and grabbed the correct one.
   Joker was entered, but on Tuesday when we were practicing gloves, he just didn't seem right. Once several years ago, he had similar symptoms - not wanting to jump up - and he had a sore back. Sure enough, a trip to our wonderful local rehab vet showed quite a bit of back soreness. He had an acupuncture treatment, but the next day, I decided to pull him since we wouldn't have the training time needed to make it worthwhile.
   I've got a nice rehab & strength training routine worked out with Gryffin that he seems to enjoy. We've been doing the workout 2-3 times a week. I mentioned last month that I'd just gotten the "Building the Canine Athlete" DVD. I've incorporated several exercises from the DVD into our routine. A friend did Gryff's workout with him 4 times while I was out of town, and I could see some nice improvements on several of the exercises as I got back to doing them with him myself. I've been enjoying this so much, and see so much benefit for Gryff that I'm offering a couple of 3 week classes called 'Tricks for Strength', one in March and one in April.

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