Radical Canines

Early last year (January 2019) Rugby broke his butt. Not really, but kind of. He had a partial tear of his middle glute and some sciatic neuritis on his left side, as well as some psoas inflammation on the right. Basically, things were angry and inflamed, but it’s easier to say he broke his butt. Plus it’s harder to say that seriously so it helped me manage the stress and guilt from his injury. Because of this “broken butt”, he spent all of 2019 off the field, doing rehab and slowly building his strength back up. I’m happy to say he is sound, happy and healthy today though I’m still cautiously easing back into sports.

Last weekend, we went dock diving and he had 6 nice jumps between 11-12 ft. The best part was, after each day of jumping he was moving well, and had no palpable heat (signs that there’s increased blood flow to an area and something’s not quite right). I was thrilled, not only because it was his first time competing in dock diving but also because it was out first competition in almost 18 months!

This week we played in toss and fetch league on Thursday (wk1) and yesterday (wk2). League consists of two 60 second rounds of toss and fetch and is pretty low key. Despite the laid back nature, Rugby still tends to go balls to the wall for disc, so it’s important that my throws are good to help prevent anything too crazy on his part. We’re also working through some issues of over-arousal and he has never reminded me more of Kip (dad). Thursday night I saw a lot of “must grab disc now!” and either his timing of his jump was off or he’d tip it off his face instead of biting and grabbing it. Yesterday’s rounds were much better! We’ve been playing little bits of toss and fetch in the yard/at the park, with a sprinkling of freestyle elements and so far it’s gone great! The more we work on these things, with strategic collection and tracking drills, the better I think it will get.

Later today we’ve got another two rounds of toss and fetch (essentially) so hopefully things continue in this positive trajectory! It’s hard to not just go and enter all the things right away so I’m trying to be mindful of just how much we’re doing, and exactly what we’re doing. At this point I’m cautiously optimistic that Rugs and I will be able to make a full and complete return to our favorite game of all, freestyle, but for now it’s slow and steady. I’m just thrilled to be sharing the field with the best rotten red dog again. It makes my heart so happy!