California Fruit

One of the many nice things about living in California is the variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. I have recently gotten into the habit of making fresh squeezed lemonade and freezing it, adding alittle fresh squeezed orange juice makes it sweeter. Then I use the frozen lemonade as ice blocks to keep dog treats and lunch cold. As it defrosts the juice is refreshingly cold. In addition to using my fruit trees(2 lemon trees, 1 orange tree, 1 grapefruit tree, 1 lime tree) my friends are recruited to bring their fruit. Fruit this size makes alot of juice! These are just average lemons out of a friends backyard-they were not given steroids. Texas has nothing on California fruit.

Greyhound Toe Injuries

Good toe


Bad toe

Whisper is just recovering from a torn toe ligament. Luckily not a severe injury. Most toe ligament injuries need surgical repair for optimal recovery. Almost all of my greyhounds through running have torn an inside or outside back toe metatarsal-P1 ligament. Although the toe looks like it should hurt it doesn't seem to bother them after a couple of weeks. Initially they are a little lame but after about two weeks of leash walking they are totally sound again.
She was back to competing in agility and Open obedience training two to three weeks after the injury.

Becca's Obedience Career Begins

Becca continues to excel in her obedience classes. Recently, they had a "finish" elimination contest at class. Each handler revved their dog up and asked them to "finish" (get into heel position) when asked. The last dog in heel position was eliminated after each round. Becca performed each time with snappy precision and in the end she was the last dog standing err, sitting! For showing everyone else how brilliantly a greyhound can perform this particular obedience routine, Becca won a stuffed bunny! She proceeded to jump and play and basically flaunt her winning prize in front of all of her classmates.

In this picture, Becca is sitting in heel position waiting for her prize.

The Next Day

After the crash and burn agility run the previous day I was alittle apprehensive about running the next day-even though she had seemed okay in the standard ring the day earlier. The jumpers couse was the hardest I have ever run in competition and we didn't Q although she did several hard parts successfully. Starting off I wasn't sure she really wanted to run in that ring again. She almost stopped in the same place that she crashed the day before. After getting started she picked up interest and seemed to run okay. I think she got distracted at one point and went around a jump.

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Then onto Standard which once again she Qed and was 12 seconds under time.

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A friend Silvina asked if I wanted to handle her Border Collie Maja in competition. Maja is a world class competitor. It was a blast. A well trained Border Collie is fast and can really bank turns. Maja is such as awesome dog and I was nervous to handle her-she and I have only run a part of a course in a match months earlier. I also didn't want to do a bad job handling her and failing. I was unsure how far I could send her or if she could understand my handling cues. For instance my tunnel command to Whisper is "Be Small" no one else uses that. That command came from the hiking I do in the fields with barbwire fences. I don't want the dogs to try to jump those fences so I got in the habit of telling them to "Be Small and crawl". It seemed a natural transition for the crawling in the tunnel. Anyway back to Maja- Silvina told me she didn't need to be talked to-just point to the obstacle and she should take it. Just as I was getting ready to take her in Silvina told me she had run out of the ring with other handlers to get back to her-Silvina. Guess we did okay since we Qed.

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Crash and Burn Agility Part 2

I am not sure why Whisper slipped in the video but whatever happened she certainly was lucky to come off the course okay. It looks like her back left hindleg may have slipped on take off and she didn't get the correct height to clear the jump. Scary- so thankful her neck is okay. Whatever happened the exhibitors were very helpful coming onto the course to help out if needed. We walked off and within minutes she seemed like herself. Make sure to listen with the sound up.

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I was nervous to run the standard course an hour later. And of course the course would have our hardest obstacle sequence-a turn off a contact obstacle into a tunnel-twice. Maybe because I was so apprehensive about how Whisper was feeling and not wanting to push to go fast we got through the course successfully and 11 seconds under course time. Another 11 MACH points but no QQs. Importantly Whisper didn't seem hurt or reluctant to run the course. It wasn't until the next day that I thought I saw alittle reluctance to run in the ring that she fell the day before.
Next post will be the following day runs.

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