Crate Rest

Before our spring adventures we found out about an injury that Griffin has had for a long time. We elected to wait to do treatment until our after planned activities – otherwise he would have had to stay home doing nothing. After seven weeks of travel and learning and extensive training  we go from having fun to Griffin being on crate rest. It was really hard to be traveling and at the seminar knowing that we’d soon be doing almost nothing – I would need to save my training inspiration for after this break. We’re trying to get rid of scar tissue in his ankle and get the correct types of tissues to grow. While this is happening, he needs to be calm and careful so that we don’t completely tear the tendon.

“Crate rest” is a term that often means – “Don’t let your dog run around the house jumping on and off of furniture and playing in the house or running and playing outside.”  I’m surprised that many people don’t take this seriously – sometimes everything is fine, sometimes healing is delayed, sometimes there are problems.

Crate rest does not mean isolation (unless a dog has a contagious disease!).

So, what are we doing?

We get ten minutes of calm walking per day. I don’t use these for class demos or helping clients, I selfishly save them for walking Griffin at home (convenient, normal, beautiful this time of year!). Sometimes we use our 10 minutes walking in town or public areas – this results in better training opportunities (‘focus and self control in an interesting environment’) and increased enrichment.

We do training for activities that are low activity.  Here’s a list of activities that a trainer posted four years ago.  It’s important to talk to your vet to be sure some of these are safe for your dog. Griffin is only allowed to do some of the things on that list.

We are working very hard on our down stays. I tether him to trees and my car and picnic tables at the park, we can work on distance and out of sight stays and staying for a long time. It’s boring but important for real life and for his competition obedience career.

Our other project is working on scent discrimination. Target the leather. Do not pick up the leather. Sniff it out, don’t use your eyes. His sniffing is so cute. I’m not sure if he just has to sniff like that or if I somehow trained that in.

28 more days until we find out when we can resume activities.