It has been a long week -- Luke is still NQR and I have no idea why. At agility class on Wednesday I started him out over a 12" jump to warm up. Since he seemed to handle that just fine, I moved him up to 16". I didn't figure it would be a problem because he'd been running around like a loon for many days prior!
Well, I was wrong. Luke wanted absolutely nothing to do with the 16" jump! He went around them repeatedly and I did not feel that it was in my best interest to force it because of what happened last week. There has to be a reason why he is refusing and it is likely because it hurts him. I wouldn't think that there is much difference between a 12" and 16" jump for a 27" dog, but apparently there is.
To simplify things for the order of the class, I decided to just stick Luke with Foley at 4" again. Our exercises were serpentines and front crosses -- we basically just went through the motions since there wasn't really anything for Luke to jump. He just didn't seem like he was running well at this point, so I pulled him from the rest of the class. I felt that he was favoring his right hind, but Laurie (our trainer) thought that she saw lameness in the left front -- that's the shoulder he hurt this summer. The real bummer is that after all this, I couldn't even get him to go through the weave poles! My poor dog is just shutting down while doing his favorite thing in the whole world!
At least it made me not regret pulling Luke from the trial this weekend. I know there's no way he could have done any of the jumping classes. Luke got to stay with my parents while I worked at the trial on Saturday -- I didn't want to bring him with because I didn't know how many dogs were running. It ended up being a pretty small trial, so I decided to bring him with me on Sunday.
I was able to squeeze Luke's crate right next to Belle, thankfully, so at least he would have company all day while I left him. Because he seems to be running without any difficulty, I decided to stick Luke in the open Touch-n-Go and Tunnelers classes. Thanks to a fluke at the NADAC offices, we were running the exact same courses at this trial as the last one, so this gave me a good opportunity to fix the spots that I flubbed on last time.
This was Luke's first TNG run at the open level and I didn't know how hard it would be for us to make time. It ran very smoothly and he got all of his contacts even without me making a point to stop him at the ends. Even still, he only came in 1.5 seconds under large dog standard course time. Wow! I can't even imagine how hard we'll have to push to make elite. Luke was still in the computer as a 16" skilled dog, though, so we actually came in a good 5 seconds under the medium dog time.
Tunnelers was immediately after the TNG and Luke was definitely ready to run again after spending all morning in his crate. After completely blowing his start line on this course at the last show, I made darn sure he waited for me this time. Because I was more prepared this time, I was able to easily get in place to direct him to the third tunnel and from there it went great! He came in a full 5 seconds under large dog course time, so I have no worries about getting our open title in tunnelers!
The next trial is December 8 & 9 and I won't be able to make any decisions about our entry until much closer to the date. I told our trainer that I am pulling Luke out of the group classes indefinitely because I don't want to push him at all. I am picking up a part time job at the dog center starting Wednesday evening and I figure that I can just pop Luke over an obstacle or two while we're there if he's feeling up to it. I'm also thinking of looking into a chiropractor for him because we just can't pinpoint what his problem is.
This morning Luke got his last antibiotic pill. I'm not sure if I need to continue with the compresses or not -- I might stop by the vet's office with him tonight and see if they'll look at it quickly and I also need to pick up another Frontline. I pulled two ticks off Luke this weekend! Argh. You'd think they'd all be dead by the middle of November.