Let the fun commence!

Ria has just finished her season, she's back with the boys (well, Solei - Elton still isn't totally convinced :-P) and her first trip out for 3 1/2 weeks ended up being to an agility show this past weekend...I wasn't quite sure how great an idea that was, but she was actually really good :-) It was over two days and just half a mile from home, so both days I took Solei & Elton up in the morning and then went home, had some lunch and took Ria and Elton in the afternoon.

She will be back at agility class on Wednesday. I have (amazingly) stuck to my resolution and have done absolutely no agility (not even been tempted by weaves haha - well, that's not true. I've been tempted, but resisted) with her for a whole month, hoping the break would do us both good - so we'll see if it has or not! She's back to once a week classes for a bit as I have no free Saturdays til late July.

It's kinda scary - she has most definitely matured physically, and there are going to be mental changes too....the unknown, I'm not entirely sure what dog I have now! Hopefully the changes will be for the better :-P

She shows for the first time in two months this weekend, so I will pop her up to ringcraft tomorrow to get some people going over her and see how she is. Hope we can both remember how ;-)

It's Solei's birthday in 4 weeks, he's having a new toy and some massage! I took him for a free evaluation 2 weeks ago and she found a spot he was reacting to that fits with where I feel he is often sensitive, so we're currently waiting for my vet to sort the paperwork out and then he'll be going for 1-4 sessions to see if it helps him! I don't feel the chiro can do any more at this point (though will continue taking him for maintenance) so I have everything crossed this will help. He was on metacam for a short time which I never felt did much, so I'm hopeful that this may be the problem as if it were skeletal/arthritis I'd have expected the metacam to make more of an impact...fingers crossed.

Finally, Elton. I didn't mention it here because I was somewhat upset at the time :-P but he was attacked by a whippet at training three weeks ago. He was utterly traumatised but seemingly unhurt (thank god for a profuse coat and an interfering Border Collie that distracted the whippet), I was furious, not least because the timing really sucked - Elton is somewhat "sticky" to me and adores toys but gets bored fairly quickly, this was less than 5 minutes into the class and I was sending him away from me over a jump to a dead toy....he was pounced on just as he reached the toy. He's not the most confident of dogs and he'd got to the point now where he was really loving it, I was getting so much speed and enthusiasm.

Solei got to do the rest of the class that week as I wasn't going to get any sense out of him. The following week I took Elton (no whippet in sight) and he was fine as long as he was on lead, went to pieces as soon as he was off. Even basic circle work he wasn't happy if he was off lead. I gave last week a miss, because I just didn't feel I could deal with it...he has also been a little off the last couple of weeks anyway because of Ria. After sailing through the first two weeks of her season he suddenly decided she was very interesting and his brain would have to take a holiday! He really worried me because he was displaying similar behaviour (but less severe) as he did when he had that horrendous adolescence that was made 100x worse by a bitch in season and then took the best part of a year til I had my dog back. I could not go through that again! However, he has since been used, is older and (hopefully) wiser and the last couple of days he has been much more his old self :-) which'll help!

So on Wednesday he will be going to class again, we will take things very slowly and see what happens. Fingers crossed.