Tuesday 30 December 2008

Ant and Gass/End of Tia's blog

Well today marks the end of Tia's rehab blog, she's retired from agility as will need TPLO if I want to do it again, and I'm not prepared to put her through that... a shame after all our trips to Wales but hey, I've learnt a lot of thinigs. She's probs got something going on neurologically that although an MRI may identify, it wouldn't make much difference as to anything else we can do for her except major surgery, and even then, it may not mean she is 'better' afterwards. But hey she is enjoying walks again even if its only on 3 and a bit legs, although she is starting to run about better now. I'm not sure yet if she'll be able to do obedience again in the ring, as I don't know if her lameness will ever go, but she's having at least 6 weeks off, so we'll relook at it after that. Just got to start counting down the months till I can bring my pup out now!

When I went up to Ant's last week I took some video of his youngster Gass (sister to Nellie-Bean and Christine W-Wyne's Rivi). Gass reminds me SO much of her mum Beanie.
Here's the vid... enjoy! My two dogs have to sit on the table there as if I tie Rix up he chews through the lead, and Tia barks even more than she does already... naughty dogs.

Sunday 28 December 2008

Puppies week 3

My weekly photos of the pups! They are very active now.

Fave pic this week - the two girlies


Tri girl and red boy Spot


Tri girl




Red and white girl



Red tri boy Bruce and red and white boy Jumbo


Bruce - tri boy

Squiffy

Fish


I have got some video of the pups and also of Ants youngster Gass, I'll post them both soon.

Tuesday 23 December 2008

Last chance saloon

With all hopes of Tia ever returning to the ring fading fast, we are making one last attempt at getting her sound. I picked her up from the specialists on Friday, she had been there a week. She looked fab. Took her for a lovely walk on Friday afternoon. Then Saturday morning, she was MEGA lame on both back legs! She eased off slightly throughout the walk. Then she was a bit lame in the evening. This repeated itself on Sunday.

I am going to try something new now. I think one of the issues is she is doing all this fitness training at walk or trot, and a lot of problems seem to occur when we speed her up. So, we are now doing a mile of 'interval' training, I have put interval in quotations as it is my version of interval. We go a total of one mile, most of it is on the road. We walk for 2 minutes, then we jog a distance of 2 lamp posts, then sprint for 2 lamp posts, then walk 2 lamp posts, etc. We sprint a total of 3 times, then the last part of it is walking. Part of the sprint is along a park where Tia and Rix chase each other and have a really good run. Tia gets very excited on this run, she loves going faster than my lazy pace. I'm going to try this 5 times a week for 4 weeks and we'll see what improvement (if any) this results in. She's on a flexi lead the rest of the time to stop her running off at the speed of light, which is all she wants to do at the moment as she's got so much pent up energy. I'm not quite sure whether Tia will ever get back to competing now, she is very weak in her movement and her balance is appalling, she is constantly falling over and slipping. All I want to do at the moment is take her on a huge long walk and let her run for hours chasing rabbits and pheasants without cringing every time she goes faster than a jog!

I always said I would give her a year (April) but that is now only 4 months away, and she's certainly not in the state I'd have hoped she'd be in by this stage.

Sunday 21 December 2008

Picture overload

Ok picture overload of the pups, you've been warned, lol.


Fish - r/w boy


Jumbo - r/w boy

Squiffy - r/w boy


Another r/w boy - with cute pink nose!




The two girlies

The red and white girl







The red tri girl - she's very active for 2 weeks old, one of the more dominant ones in the litter it seems like!








Sunday 14 December 2008

Pups at 9 days old

Some more pics of the pups, I didn't actually take some of all of them as I ended up having puppy snuggles with the red tri girl for 10mins, ooh shes cute. They are so noisy!

My fave piccie - red tri girl!



Puppy snuggles :)


The red and white girl






Squiffy - lol