Pebble in Training

More fun activities with Pebble! Starting more dedicated fitness work with her has been such a great consequence of her injury (all healed and back in full work now, by the way!). I’ve been lucky she basically stays in reasonably good condition without any special work on my part, but I really do like how she’s looking physically after a month of daily, intentional exercise. She also loves it, which is great.

Her limp is extremely mild - honestly almost fully resolved in my opinion - but I figured I’d keep the appointment out of an abundance of caution. I’m glad I did. She has a mild strain of her left hip flexor and is doing a few very subtle things (tiny bit of offloading that left hind limb while standing, very minor but noticeable abduction in her sits and downs) that suggest she still isn’t quite right despite the limp improving on its own with rest. Plus a few other little “living life” types of things, but nothing that changes the rehab course for now. She got some cold laser treatment and learned some exercises that we’ll be doing daily for 2-4 weeks, and we’ll do weekly check-ins to see how it’s going and figure out when she can come back into work. I’m a little sad we’re missing the end of this agility session when she’s been doing so fantastic lately, and it feels a little silly because the most obvious clinical sign (the limp) is basically resolved, but I’m mostly very relieved it’s something she can recover from. I’d rather deal with it now while it’s a super minor issue that isn’t causing her serious discomfort than wait and have a much bigger issue to handle somewhere down the line. There will be plenty of time for us to run around and jump over plastic sticks later!

We did attempt agility class last night because that’s where we noticed something was off with her gait. It’s very, very infrequent and she does not seem to be in pain, so the plan was to take it easy and try to notice if it was getting worse or better after some light use. I was more focused on trying to watch her movement than the actual agility training, so I don’t have a fun training report... but she actually did everything extremely well because my mind was not so busy trying to over-manage her. Her gait didn’t seem to improve or worsen over the course of the class, but she definitely offered a few stutter steps this morning so... I don’t think it helped, let’s say. 

Anyways, in our last sequence this issue manifested in me just not asking for very necessary front crosses because I was overly worried about getting Pebble to the next correct obstacle without her blowing me off to do something else. By not doing the front crosses everything was awkward-to-impossible, though - it made the angles of everything super awkward and challenging. My brain wanted to ask for the front cross but it took a frustratingly long time for my feet to just do the damn thing. Once I finally started getting it everything went much smoother. Go figure.

Besides that, our last class was really great though! I’m still chipping away at trying to send her more and we’re definitely making progress on that front. We’re starting to get some moments where I feel like, wow, my dog is kind of almost feeling a little impressive here? We still have our bobbles (as evidenced by our total wipeout yesterday) but I’m starting to feel the connection and confidence coming through more often and that is a lot of fun. Every time we step into the ring I expect Pebble to succeed now, which is a new feeling for me, and it seems to make a huge difference for Pebble. My faked confidence is starting to become genuine confidence - magic! 

Our weaves remain the one glaring exception to this progress. The gears are turning more but it’s still not quite clicking. I think I am doing something wrong with my handling because Pebble will pop out and my trainer will come talk to me to troubleshoot things, then Pebble will run the weaves cleanly without me while we talk (the danger of having a dog who likes to problem solve and offer lots and lots of behaviors - they often show you up when you stop paying attention to them for a moment!), but I can’t quite get my finger on how I’m messing her up. I try to support her hard at the entry then stay about a pole ahead of her, but obviously something isn’t working. Each week it seems to take fewer attempts to get a clean run through, so I think we are progressing, but it feels really slow because Pebble usually picks things up so fast. I think it’ll come together eventually and I just need to be patient and not get frustrated in the meantime.

Confidence is magic. Pebble was excellent and still seems like she’s starting to really fire on all cylinders. She’s starting to pick up obstacle discrimination, and in general things are getting a lot cleaner. She still likes to stick pretty close to me for jumps and tunnels, but she is getting awesome at sending and driving ahead of me onto any of the contact obstacles which has let us get our rear crosses working really nicely. I never thought I’d see the day where I’d often rather choose the rear cross than the front cross, but here we are. I really want to get brave enough to get someone to video us but my social skills aren’t quite there... but I’m really curious to see if some of these sequences are starting to look as good as they feel. I won’t compete until Pebble’s weaves are way more reliable, but our trainer brought it up again last night and I am definitely getting more into the idea of trying that out some day.

Anyways, speaking of our weaves... Pebble was totally committed and going to get her weaves on her first attempt except I messed up and blocked her entry... jlkadfslkjafd. We tried again and she picked them up much more easily than she’s been getting them, so our trainer tightened the angle up to near upright (where things like to fall apart for us) and she nailed them again and we stopped on that note - asking for more than 2 clean reps of all 12 poles still feels a little like pushing our luck at this point. I had a couple observations about weaves since I think about them a lot since they’re still by far our weakest point. 

Pebble seems to use my vocal cue more for the weaves than for anything else in agility; most things she’ll forgive a late or missed vocal cue and just do her best based on my body language, but for the weaves she absolutely needs an early, loud heads up that that’s where we’re going. I have no idea why that’s the case, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed over our past few classes.

Tentatively, it seems like as long as Pebble gets her entry and I stay near her for support she’s getting pretty good about staying in the weaves for all 12 poles without popping out. I wouldn’t be surprised if that isn’t really permanent yet, but it’s nice while it lasts. 

So I’m really happy with how things are going with our agility! I mean, the main thing for me is always that Pebble gets to have fun and she’s 1000% still doing that, but it’s cool that she’s having fun and getting... kind of maybe a little good at it? Just a little?? Maybe???