Im home

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What a long day and Im so glad to be home. Im sure Miley is glad to be home too. The guy sitting next to me yesterday said, "Your dog's bored isn't she?" Yep! It was pouring down rain yesterday morning, so no trips to the park. It did stop raining at lunch time so I took her out and threw the ball for a while but it wasn't enough.

I love her ears in this picture. I was trying to get the contrast between the two grasses and the sky was really dark. The sky part didn't show up that great.
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Ok, I know , enough dog pictures. Now to the seminar. It was a great learning experience. (Miley was bored.) So to start. She was first a human physical therapist. She had a dog going thur college and went to an instructor and said, "What about doing this for animals?". Her instructor told her no one was going to pay money to have their dog worked on. LoL, boy was she wrong. Debbie first job was with the NYC ballet and then she worked for a football team, I think the Chargers. I could be wrong about the name, I kinda get brain fog when people talk about football. Her interest lies in movement.
Structure is very important. We went over structure alot. Through out the two days she would bring different dogs up and we would go over their structure. No dog is perfect. Its important that you know your dogs weakness so that you can strenghten them. Be aware that they could be prone to injury because of that weakness. Catching the injury as early as possible can save you a long recovery and lots of money. If your dog is being injured more than once( I thought she said twice but my notes say once) a year, review their structure and what you are doing with them. If your dog is injured and you are seeing a Chiro, accuputureist(SP?) or rehab vet, and after 3 visits you are really not seeing improvement you need to reevaluate the treatment.
Every month you should completely go over your dog. We all did this with our dogs. She went through all the things we should be checking. It lets you know what is normal and you may find the start of an injury. Every 6 months you should take pictures of your dog. Front, back, one of each side. Then document what the dog is eating, personality and what activities they are doing. Then you can review the pictures is see if there are any changes.
Injuries. If your dog is getting injured or not getting better. What are they doing? It may not be your sport. It maybe what other activities your dog is doing. Like crazy playing in the house with other dogs, ricocheting off furniture (Miley). It could be when your dog is ball playing, they are crazy. Rolling head over heals to get the ball. Swinging from vines by their teeth, twisting all around. Dogs do crazy things. So what is your dog doing. She has a dog that cant seem to learn he cant chase the barn cat through the barn door. The cat runs under the door and bam the dog hit the barn door with his head. Then its back hurts. Just a side note: Dock diving causes hyper extension of the tail. Which could cause back problems. She is not saying its bad. Just be aware so you can find injuries early. Water dogs were having back problems and they figured out it was the flotation devise they were required to wear. So they have redone the flotation devices the dogs have to wear that dont put so much pressure pushing the shoulders up and got rid of the back pain. I just thought these things were interesting.
We did ball work both days. Yes that big wolfhound got on the ball. It took four people but he was on. Your dog needs to be standing comfortably on the ball. If they are squashed, then they aren't working there muscle correctly. You should do the ball daily for 10-14 days, and then go to three days a week. You start for 5-10 minutes and then depending on the dog, you can work up to 25 minutes.
The worse time for injuries is going from cold, to warm to cold. So say a trial starts and its 25 degrees, the it warms up to 68 degrees then it cools down to 30 that evening. More injuries will occur. Going from a warm building, then outside to warm up your dog in the cold and then back in to the warm building can set your dog up for injury.Try to do as much warm up in the warm building as you can. She really like the Back on Track coats. She would use the coat to go from warm to cold. Lots if injuries are seen when dogs are kept out in their cars in cold weather and then brought into the building to run.
She really believes in warming you dog up. And she took us and our dogs through the type of warm up routine we should do. I felt good that I was already doing that except for the stretching part. So Ill have to add that in esp. the toes. I never thought about the toes. Then its really important to cool your dog down. Your dog can die from shock if you run them and their body temperature is high and just put them back in their crate. Also you should stretch them at the end of the cool down too.
Odds and ends. She thinks our a-frames are too soft in the USA. When she did that recent article for Clean Run on the rear end of the dog and the effects with the a-frame. She noticed how hard the dogs were hitting the a-frame going up. And how the equipment flexed. I think she said she was doing an article on this. Buying a puppy. Just because the mother is a great agility dog and the father is a great herding dog, doenst mean all the puppies will have great structure and should go to performance homes. Check their structure. Puppies should be puppies and not jumping and doing equipment until through puppy hood. To many dogs are started early and then when they are 3years old are breaking down. She doesn't like crate rest. We would never tell a person to sit on the couch and rest for weeks after an injury. The dog shouldn't be allowed to be crazy but crate resting constricts the muscles, which you are trying to avoid. Also if you cant figure out which leg is lame. Paint the top of the dogs toe nails with one color and the bottom of the nails with another color. Check the nails in 48 hours to see what is going on.
There was so much information given in this seminar. Conditioning, endurance training, injury recognition ect..It was great. I wouldn't recommend bring a active dog because there is to much down time. I learned so much about structure and it now makes sense to me. We worked on correct stretching, which I needed to learn. Remember this is what I thought I heard and sometimes people dont hear things correctly. So I may have gotten things wrong.