Updates.

Well I've had a busy time over the last week. My Mum( who's in her late 80's) was taken into hospital to have a serious operation. She had a cancerous lump in her stomach. They did pioneering surgery on her. She had keyhole surgery to remove it and apparently the operation was videoed to be shown round the world as there have only been 2 such operations done this way. They went through her belly button. Her recovery has been fantastic & she was out within 6 days of her surgery. Mum has now gone down to convalesce with my sister in Chichester.Hopefully it won't be long till she's fit enough for us to continue our dog walks together. My Mum is great and still can still walk 2 miles or more with the dogs. Dad is still in the nursing home, Mum is his carer and until she is 100% fit she can't look after him. So last week I was busy visiting Mum at the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford, visiting dad at the home in Woking, training my dogs etc etc.
Here's a picture of Mum & Dad taken last year on the 60th wedding anniversary, and another of us out on one of our walks, also last year.





So back to my dogs. I have started doing some grid work with Fozzie. He is good at it and is jumping quite cleanly. I have at last managed to book a grid jumping day at the end of April, so I'll learn how to progress on with it. His jumping style is the worse I have ever seen. He jumps like a deer, takes off too soon and lands sometimes on all four feet. He can't wing wrap cleanly because his legs are just not right !!! I have him booked into to see a chiropractor next week to get him checked out , it was suggested to me that maybe his neck/back was out which is causing this action.


His weave training has gone backwards !!! The week before I mentioned how it had progressed well, now he is struggling again and has slowed down :-( I am thinking that if he has got a neck problem this could be causing him to be funny in the weaves as well.

Contacts...well I am really pleased. I started doing the ball training at the end of the dogwalk and am happy with the result. Last week in class he flew across the dogwalk and at the last minute the toy suddenly appeared ( from someone else) at the bottom, he really drove to it and stopped beautifully. I have now put him on the lead as well and am only doing the down ramp for this ,I have started to throw the toy as he pulls against me. Its working well so far.


I just love the way the words in that song ,that I put on that video sum things up so nicely !!!!

His seesaw has also sped up.


I am still having really bad concentration problems with him and if anything distracts him, he's just terrible.

So hopefully on my next post I will be able to tell you what the Chiro found and we can go from there. I have been feeling very depressed again about him, I think I am just very tired ! I am worried that I won't be able to get him to jump properly. One things for sure if he has got a neck problem all bouncy tuggy type games(which he loves) will have to stop. I will have to find some other form of play reward.

Woody is doing really really well. He is still having his weekly swims & I have now jumped him over a few medium jumps and he seems fine. I am taking it really slowly, but boy is he happy to get out to play.