A very sad day - goodbye Kate

26.10.89 - 11.3.07

We said goodbye to our Katie yesterday. I knew on Saturday night when I left for the comp that the lump in her throat/mouth had enlarged significantly, and even though she was active and eating well, it was sore to touch and was starting to affect her breathing. I had a disturbed night's sleep listening to her snores and restlessness.

On Sunday morning we put her up on the bed for a cuddle, saw how prominent the lump was and decided it was time. So the three of us lay there for an hour just cuddling and stroking and sharing our love, we then got the clan together to say farewell before going to the vet. She is now laid to rest in our pet cemetary overlooking the dam, the yard and the property. We will miss her so much; she was one of the most loving, giving, uncomplicated dogs imaginable. She was our 'support crew'. She's been a huge part of our lives for over 12 years and to have her live to 17 was itself such a gift.

Today everything is off-kilter, too much food defrosted, too many plates, an empty bed, and no schmoo bear. There's a big hole and lots of tears. Love you always Kate...

A motivational day

On Friday I had the great fortune to again be under the instruction of Susan Garrett. We worked through some double-box exercises using Greg Derrett's method of handling. It clarified a lot for me; reminded me how sloppy I was being; and showed up some huge gaps in my training. It felt so beneficial to have Susan's eye reminding me to be consistent; and pointing out where and when I wasn't being. Oh to have her critical eye assessing you and reminding you to be a better trainer more often! It was good to have a number of the people I regularly train with there too though, as we can now pick on each other and push each other to be more consistent and to set our goals higher. The entire day motivated me to sit down and plan out a training schedule for myself and my dogs again. It was also evident that I need to make the effort to video my training sessions much more often; as well as my competitive runs, that way I can see when my timing sucks or where my position was off.
Priorities include: improving the timing of my turns; working and testing my 270s; testing my dogs independence in the weaves and on their contacts; and of course, ramping up the "fun" factor; all training sessions need to be short, hard, fast and fun! Put the time into preparing the session and evaluating the session; the session itself is short and snappy.

What next??!!

Well, just got back from our "weekly" vet's visit. Good news and bad news. Good news is that the T4 results are in the normal range at 34 after 4 weeks on thyroxine. YAY!!! Hopefully this will help boost Zoom's extremely compromised immune system. Zoomy has certainly been more energized and happy again in the past week so I had expected a good outcome with regard the thyroid.
What had been worrying me is that while the skin on her back is healing her chin is red raw and she has a couple of red-raw patches on her feet. So we did a skin scraping as well as her bloods, and guess what, my 3 year old (nearly 4) dog has demodex caused by an infestation of demodectic mites!!! Arrggghhh... what more can happen??? Obviously her immune system was so compromised that she couldn't counteract the mites that commonly live on dogs in small numbers. Usually localised demodex is seen on puppies, but as I found out today it is also reasonably common for dogs with low thyroid function to succumb to demodectic infestations. Of course if her demodex becomes further generalized it will be very frustrating to treat and uncomfortable for Zoomy especially with both the lupus and hypo-thyroidism and the related medications. So, the vet is trying to "nip it in the bud". This translates to an initial treatment cycle of 8 weeks of 1ml of ivermectin per day (she is between 15 & 16kg in weight). She needs to have two "clear" skin scrapings at the end of this cycle for it to be considered under control.
I'm extremely nervous about this treatment having been exposed to many years of warnings against ivermectin use in shelties and collies (intolerance due to mutation in the multi-drug resistance gene (MDR1) that is apparent in as many as 75% of collies). I'm working from home for the next day or two to watch for any adverse reaction to the ivermectin. In all honesty I would have been more comfortable if we'd tested Zoom for the mutant gene prior to commencing the treatment, but... well... fingers crossed.
In addition, she also has another 2 weeks of Cephalexin antibiotic to ensure that the Staphylococci infection is completely gone and to ensure the demodectic mange doesn't become infected.

For more info on demodex:
http://www.sniksnak.com/doghealth/demodecticmange.html
http://www.geocities.com/schlosser44/Demodex.html

For an article on treatments of Canine Genereralised Demodicosis (CGD):
http://www.all-creatures-vet.com/demodex.html

The Merck Veterinary Manual excerpt:
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/72005.htm

For info on multidrug sensitivity in Shelties and Collies
http://www.vetmed.wsu.edu/depts-VCPL/

ADAA fundraising comp

Well, Last Saturday nite was another ADAA fundraising comp, this one hosted by ADCQ. Of my three puppies, only Jonty was fit for agility, so off he and I went. On the trip up the car in front of us backfired a few times (sounded like the crack of a gun firing) and he got most upset. He managed to pull backwards out of his seatbelt harness and ended up under my feet. Needless to say I had to pull over; I grabbed some rewards and fed him for lying quietly in the seat, after he relaxed a little I belted him back in and we were on our way again with randomly timed treats for his continued dropped position in the passenger seat. Seemed to help as he was his normal self again once we arrived at the comp and was also good on the way home.

As for the comp we had four runs, open agility, advanced agility, open gamblers and open jumping. We started with a clean run and a win in open agility, but I was annoyed at myself as I didn't stick to my criteria. Jonty has been doing great 2o-2o contacts on his dogwalk, but in that round clean ran off the end; in the split second I had to make a decision, I made the wrong one! I allowed him to keep running. When I am inconsistent like this on acceptable criteria I just make agility all that much harder on both of us. Despite that I was very happy with his run.

Our advanced run started out really well, but there was a simple distance handling challenge built in; a tunnel under the dogwalk with a long jump on the far side of the walk; but Jont ran past the longjump. It reconfirmed for me that I have a hole in his training in working away from me consistently. As he doesn't "fetch" I haven't rewarded distance and independence through placement of the reward by throwing a toy. I've been slowly working on "fetch" as a fun game but it isn't ready to be combined with agility as a reward yet, so instead I'll start out with some jump lane work with a food target at the end and we'll back chain through the jumps to it, till he's happily working through five / six jumps ahead of me. Then I'll vary that to angling the jumps, putting in a spread or long jump, adding a tunnel, then weaves etc. I'll keep reinforcing fetch as a game as well, so that eventually the toy will be able to be thrown to reward his position.

The next run was gamblers, with a distance challenge of course! We got this distance challenge for a quali and a win. The hardest part of the distance challenge was a push out to the furtherest tunnel entrance. I assisted him to get this challenge through the angle we approached the hurdles and tunnel at. So he is now 4/7ths of the way to his GD title.

The final run was open jumping. Lovely course with a "blast-around" section as well as some tight pieces. I ran one of the tight sections as a serpentine sequence and it worked really well for us. But I fell back into "cruise" mode rather than "attack" mode, so whilst it was a tidy clear run for us, it wasn't as quick as it should have been. I need to run every course like it is an advanced course! A really lovely run was put in by Bobby for a win. He also earned his first purple card in advanced earlier in the night so the mini class is starting to heat up again!

There was no presentation ceremony which made for a 9:30pm finish YAY! But perhaps lacked a little collegiality where we usually sit around gas-bagging at the end of the night and then cheer folk on. Hard to get the right balance between time and social elements, though I was sure pleased to be home by 10:30pm.

Friday night training

Well, our WAAG training Friday night was very enjoyable. I only had Jonty with me, but it felt like it was a positive training session and I reminded myself to practice what I preach. He started out the night very distracted sniffing and piddling all the way from the car to the field. Our first warm up run was also plagued by his distraction and I felt myself getting frustated. Rather than rehearse and/or reinforce a slow, inattentive run though, I made the decision to end the run; I scooped him up part way through the sequence and placed him back in his crate. At the time I was uncertain what effect my action would have; I didn't want my frustration to stress him out or intimidate him, nor did I want him to think that his behaviour was acceptable. Apparently it helped rather than hindered though, as 10 minutes later he came out a different dog. We engaged in excited play and tugging before our run and even though there were footballers running and kicking the ball right beside his path he remained focussed, fast and accurate. YAY! First success of the night. But I then reminded myself that I needed to maintain that energy and connection the entire time he was out of his crate, not just before a sequence, and during a sequence but also after. The game starts the moment I open the crate door with a 123 release, tugging and playing, then hard and fast through the sequence, reward at the end and then fast and fun back to the crate. Keep the cues clear that we are going hard at agility, not just going for a stroll around the park. At all times he is out of his crate he has my focus, I have his focus, and we go hard. If I want more speed and attitude on a course then I need to rehearse for it. Free time for both of us comes at the end of the night when I allow him his sniffing/piddling "boy" time and he allows me to chat with friends. But the focus when it is our turn on the equipment is 100% on each other and 100% effort and energy from both of us. I can't expect him to give 100% if I'm laid back and cruisy or if I'm inconsistent about when I want his attention and when I don't. I need to keep it simple and black and white. I'm reminded of the addage "you get out what you put in" (and the workout from giving 100% energy to your dog sure beats a session at the gym!)

My other news of the day was the results from Zoom's skin swab. The rash is now a staph infection. So we'll add another week of the antibiotics to ensure we have really got it under control and cleared up. Hopefully that in conjunction with the thyroxin will have her "system" back in some semblence of balance and health. I washed her again in the malaseb which seems to be helping clear up the skin and remove the scurf from the rash. The skin appears healthier and I do believe the beginnings of hair growth are apparent. YAY!
Missy is still limping, though it is much more apparent on hard or pebbly ground. So perhaps it is a deep seated bruise to the pad rather than a wrist strain.

Progress maybe

Well Zoomy is definitely feeling more energetic! She's been in and out like a jack-in-the-box this morning. Her sores across her back are looking healthier, but still quite tender. She is continuing to lose chunks of hair as the scabs from the rash come loose; but the good part of that quite gross description is that it is healthy looking skin under those scabs rather than the ulcerated sores we had earlier in the week. Now to watch to see if the hair is starting to regrow.
Missy came out of her crate this morning without limping, but after following Zoom out of the house at a million miles an hour she was limping again. [And of course I thought "Stupid handler; Bang head here!!!]. So she's back in her crate again now. I'm still not sure what is causing her soreness, but it seems that a few days of crate rest is going to assist rather than be detrimental. Then we'll try for some swimming and controlled exercise to see how she's distributing her weight.
In the meantime Jonty and I will continue to work on our shaped retrieve and we'll also do a few "wild" 123 games each day to improve his acceleration towards me. When I'm happier with his drive we'll tackle the weaves again, slightly off-setting the 2x2's so that we can work on getting a better stride pattern and rhythm happening again.
Entries need to be posted for the ADAA competition being hosted at ADCQ today... I'll send off entries for Missy and cross my fingers. Zoom won't be fit enough by then.

Back to the Vet

Arrggghhh.... My poor Zoomy is still not looking / feeling so good. And now Missy is also limping after a rough play session this morning!

Zoom has Discoid Lupus and was recently diagnosed with Autoimmune Hypothyroidism. She hadn't been "herself" for nearly 6 months, so the recent diagnosis was something of a relief in that we had a potential solution to getting her feeling great again. But I was back to the vet this morning with her after just 10 days of thyroid medication and a week of antibiotics. The skin lesions on her back that have been present as a rash since August last year have now turned nasty. All that time the rash has been present, but without having any real consequence on her behaviour. We'd hoped the thyroid treatment would improve the skin problems, but that's certainly not the case yet. The rash seems to have become a deep infection in the root bed of her hair folicles, causing large clumps of hair to come out with the skin. So she's back on a strong antibiotic for two weeks and a skin biopsy has gone off to the specialist for analysis. Meanwhile she needs to keep her elizabethan collar on as she's wanting to scratch and bite at the wounds. She'd also lost half a kilo in body weight so I haven't got the balance quite right yet, so I'm increasing her food by another quarter of a cup daily. Despite all of this though, I swear she seems brighter in herself. Her eyes are coming alive again. Fingers crossed we can get her healthy and happy again soon.

As for Missy; I'm thinking she's bruised for off-fore foot pad as it seems tender to touch and she is reluctant to put it down or place weight on it- most noticably on rough surfaces. I'll give her a day or so observing it and see if this is the problem or not. ... And we had such a nice training session last night after the rain. I've been working on her jumping after putting together a plan based on the wisdom from a combination of articles written by Susan Salo and Jo Sermon and the One Jump DVD by Susan Garrett. Hopefully this is a short-term injury.