Schreiber January 11, 2010

A new year with Pink Girl; our visits have been infrequent as she is medically fragile and gets ill frequently. I was told she had been asking about River and was happy to see him. She asked about Amanda, who was sick and stayed home that day. Happy to see him didn't translate into happy to cooperate with the therapist. Pink Girl wanted to demonstrate her rolling skills instead of the crawling she was asked to do, much less working on walking. She did cooperate for her favorite, holding a hula hoop for him to jump through and this is hard work for her to stand as straight as possible and tell him "over". She also enjoys dropping treats for River, which I think is his favorite trick for her to do.

MIL Rest In Peace

My friend's MIL passed on a few days ago at hospice. I had taken just River for another visit right before Christmas while she was still at home. She was confined to bed at this point but still delighted to see him, although she could only talk in a whisper. River greeted her with kisses; he seems to know she enjoys them. She requested that he lay on the bed with her, so I told him "up" and got him laying along side of her where she could easily pet his head. We visted briefly; she drifted off occasionally, then woke to apologize and blame it on her medication. She still kept her hand on River. When the hospice nurse arrived, seemed the right time for us to go. I hugged her good bye and promised her a copy of the photos we were planning to take of River and Noche in Santa hats. I'm sorry we didn't get it done in time to show her.

Limping Along

That could describe the frequency of my blogging here, but today it refers to River. About 15 minutes into his agility class, the instructor and I noticed that he was limping, so no more jumping or training for him today.

She checked his nails and pads wihtout finding anything. We hadn't observed anything happen. He had been doing a series of 2 low jumps, with the goal of driving through the jumps to a target bag that Amanda was throwing. He tends to look at Amanda after each piece of equipment, which slows him down overall. He was making good progress on focusing on the bag and heading for that after 2 jumps. So then, he started from the pause table, took a bar jump and then turned to the 2 jumps in sequence. Coming back after the second time of this was when we spotted the limping. He put weight on it and moved fine at a walk, but with a little more speed, favored his left front. So, clipped the leash back on him and he got to rest. We got to help Wendy play with her 8 week old border collie puppies; gotta love that puppy breath smell.

River was still limping earlier at home and we have been discouraging running and jumping the rest of the day. It's late evening as I write this and he is walking without a limp right now. We're ignoring his requests to throw a toy so he won't run. I prefer to err on the side of caution and at least wait until tomorrow. Hoping this is the equivalent of a turned ankle, that maybe he just took a jump awkwardly, and will recover quickly.