Visit to Carol

Lumi and I saw Carol, her holistic vet, today. We covered the usual items of the visit -- acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, laser therapy -- and also some new items.

BIG DOGS
I brought up the question of whether I was responsible for the degree of Lumi's arthritis (both hips and left wrist), and whether I had been negligent in having her arthritis diagnosed. Carol dismissed both ideas and pointed out all the things Lumi is doing right -- good diet, good weight, daily stretches, trained exercises, sports, supplements, regular vet, holistic vet, two orthopedists, three sets of hip X-rays, and two sets of forequarter X-rays already in Lumi's three years. Carol noted that it's difficult to keep a big performance dog sound. She must have run into questions like this before. She said that people with smaller dogs don't always seem to understand.

BACK TO THE FUTURE
Then Carol said that Lumi's wrist seems quite a bit better this month. To my surprise, she added that she doesn't think there's any reason Lumi should not resume both agility and freestyle, within limits. She suggested two areas of limitation.

First, she feels that I can rely on Lumi's behavior to choose freestyle moves and agility obstacles. Carol feels, based on a year and half's monthly visits with Lumi, that if Lumi doesn't want to do something, it's not likely to be motivation or a training issue, it's likely to be pain. Therefore, when Lumi shows avoidance of something, I should trust her. We know two things that Lumi has a history of avoiding: flip finishes on the left, and the teeter. But that doesn't rule out whole classes of other freestyle moves as I had surmised, nor all agility.

The other limitation is that Carol would like to see Lumi jump no higher than 16". Since Lumi stands 24-1/2" at the withers, that rules out AKC agility as far as I know, but I believe that NADAC and CPE would both have provisions for Lumi jumping at 16".

Cool, huh? Lumi can start doing agility again, and we also have a much wider palette of freestyle moves to work with than I had thought. We may eliminate more moves besides the flip finish to left heel in the future, but we'll do it based on observation rather than assumption. Soon we'll start coming up with a new routine for her.

As for agility, Carol had another suggestion I liked very much. Let's start with work on a single obstacle until our next visit. If Lumi's wrist is more painful at that time, we'll know what probably caused it. For me, the choice was between Lumi's two favorites, weaves or jumps. Given how hard the ground is these days, I decided to go with weaves. In a month, assuming all is still well, we'll add jumps for another month and then see where we are.

Well, that brings you up to date on Lumi's freestyle and agility. As for her other sports, here's a quick update.

SELECTING A TRACKING STYLE
Lumi's making great progress in FCI/Schutzhund-style tracking, and also in AKC-style, but IMO this can't go on. One day there will be no bait in the FCI track and Lumi won't be able to distinguish it from an AKC track. So except for one more AKC class in about two weeks, I think we've done all we're going to do with that style of tracking. I assume we'll eventually test for an AKC title or two, but we'll be working in FCI style.

REAL BIRDS, REAL GUNFIRE
Meanwhile, tomorrow is a big day for Lumi's field training, her first chance to be around real birds and real gunfire. Lumi and I have spent the last month doing D&CC with various loud noises, and she's fine with all of them now: she thinks they're recall cues.

Of course, gunfire is different, but something else Carol said makes me optimistic. It seems Carol's Berner is as scared of thunder as Lumi is, yet had not the slightest problem with gunfire the first time she heard it, and that was with a gun in her immediate vicinity. Carol thinks that dogs experience gunfire differently from thunderstorms and fireworks displays. No guarantees, but my fingers are crossed that Lumi has as easy time of it as Carol's Berner did.