There may be hope!

Well we had a bit of hope tonight!

I'd almost given up hope of Tia doing agility again as we keep having setbacks and it seemed the only thing could keep her sound was going to Lowri's twice a week and I just can't do that at the moment, so a couple of weeks ago I stopped training her as she kept slipping and hurting herself, it seemed like she had a big problem with her balance. However on talking to Lowri she said if I stopped, it would probably get worse, so the best thing to do is keep persaveering without pushing her too much.

So, tonight, Hannah did Tia's physio and did some different exercises with T, we found although she kept trying to set her spine in a curve to the right, if you try and bend her to the right she is now worse than bending her to the left! We also did some work on turns round poles and some jumping work and Tia was really good, I'm going to up the turn work as it will aid her balance leaning around corners.

We also did some exercises on the exercise ball. Tia's always hated this! Now I realise why... this is my view... so it's not scientific! I think the reason Tia hates the ball so much is because it makes her stretch her back legs EXACTLY like the jumping shape I'm trying to get her to do. When you put her on the ball (her front feet are on the ground), instead of being happy to have her back legs extended over the ball she tries hard as possible to tuck them up (like she tucks them up over jumps!) After lots of wriggling Tia finally stopped tensing up and then was fine, we did some stretches over the ball and then some exercises with her back feet on the ground and her balancing her front feet on the ball - she really struggles with this, did it with Rix and he got the idea within seconds but the ball was toddling off in all directions with Tia - so we have loadssssssss to do! Now, my (unscientific!) theory is that if I can get her to relax and stretch her back legs over the ball, it MAY be the key to teaching her to jump extended in agility. She just has to relearn that jumping and stretching her back legs does not equal pain!!

Excitement over!!