MN trip – July 2016

Our summer has been so busy – this trip should have happened 4-6 weeks sooner but we did finally make it up for our re-checks with the rehab vet! We also do adventures with our friends. While it’s a long drive, it’s never quite as bad as I think it will be. We have a really nice routine now and I’m not worried about getting there on time.

This trip all the dogs got some shorter or longer times running in woods/pastures. Tonks swam in a river! And a lake! And played fetch with an unknown child!  We did walks in town (not so great….more training!), visited two regular parks, visited a state park!  We got a lot done!

Blaze:  Blaze is almost 15.5.  Our goals are to keep him as happy, healthy, and comfortable as possible. We modified his exercises, will be feeding him just a little more, and overall he really is doing quite well.

Griffin: Mostly well. I mis-understood one set of exercises last time so we’ll be making some changes to try and get him to keep his back feet tucked in a little more and to hopefully make his down position better (for competition activities!).  He’s happy and doing well.  The worst part was how sad he was to be there – luckily his stress response is to get more wiggly/jumpy – not anything unsafe.

Tonks:  At the last minute we added in an appointment for her. We’ve been having trouble training the tunnel for agility. She’s not getting as enthusiastic as I would expect. And while this could be a training issue, I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a health related challenge.  We did find one minor thing to work on with her shoulders – but that likely isn’t our tunnel problem – so back to training!

Viktor:  He’s our primary reason for visits at this point – we’re monitoring his front legs for problems that we noticed when he was about 10 weeks old. We’ve been going up to this vet since then to try and minimize the potential damage and increase his chances for a pain-free life. His measurements were mostly the same. He was not painful. He is looking better and better physically.  And now we have (limited!) unrestricted activity! He is allowed to frolic and run!

We got back on Tuesday and weren’t able to go hiking until Thursday – and we did our first longer “hike” since he was about 10 weeks old.  15 minutes long… but we’ll increase from there.