Over the years I've always been very fortunate to have healthy and sound horses.  I've watched as friends & family had repeated problems with their horses' soundness and thanked my lucky stars that I didn't have to go through that!  Well, now it's my turn -- with my dog.

Last night was our first class of our new session of agility.  We have a new instructor this time, Alli, and she's great!  I think this class will go really well, if I can duct tape my dog together.

The class started out fine.  We all warmed up on individual jumps doing wraps and crosses.  Luke didn't seem terribly enthralled with the 16" jump, so I lowered it down to 12" and he did it quite willingly.

When the class joined again we put together the first seven obstacles on the course -- jump, tunnel, tire, serpentine (3) jumps and the teeter.  Luke did this just fine.  Class time was running short, so we were all then given the opportunity to walk the course and run it once with our dogs.

I set Luke up at the first jump and lead out, but he went around that first jump three times.  Figuring it was his usual lead-out issue I decided to run with him instead.  He whined going over the jump and came up three-legged lame, hopping with his right hind in the air.  He scooted right over to me and leaned into me, basically saying, "Mom, I hurt!"

I took him out of the ring and massaged his hind end all over and didn't get a reaction out of him for anything.  I don't know if he just pulled a muscle or if it was something more serious.  He was walking a bit stiff-legged by the time we left, but he was putting weight on the leg just fine.  When we got home I gave him an aspirin and massaged him some more.

This morning he was wilder than a coon.  When we went to potty before leaving for work he grabbed a big stick and got a major case of the zoomies.  So....  he appears to be running okay.  I still think that he is going to be on strict activity limitation for the next week.  Walks only, no chasing, no jumping.

Of course this would happen on the night that I signed us up for the next trial -- open in everything except that darn jumpers class.  I'm really hoping that it's nothing major -- but it's getting a little frustrating when my dog seems like he's falling apart!  I don't want to hurt him, but he LOVES this stuff and would be miserable if he couldn't do it.  I already took frisbee away from him -- if I took away agility he wouldn't have anything left.