And in other news

.. theres not a great deal really.

We have had a fair break in agility training between bad weather and trainers injuring themselves. But Tooheys got back to training last week and Im happy with our progression, although with all thats been happening hes lost conditioning. We had a 'fun show' last weekend, and while I only ran him on the jumping courses and he ran well, I felt he was struggling alittle with speed over jumps compared to normal.

His contacts are starting to come along quite nicely now - in the end I decided to go with the running Aframe and stopped (2o2o) dogwalk, and he is now consistently driving to the bottom of the contacts regardless of my position, although sometimes forgets he has to keep his back feet on the dogwalk and goes skiing off the target.

And we are both finally starting to get our act together on pull-throughs. Its only taken me 2 years to get my footwork right, but I think finally the penny's dropped for us both.

Now to work on our left & rights...

The piccies in this post are some Ive just received taken at DINas and at a training session last year. Many thanks to Patch for taking these, they mean alot.

Chemotherapy and dogs

We are coming out the other side of a rough week and thankfully survived to tell the tail.
As some of you may know just over a month ago Hollie developed a fast growing mammary tumour. She had aggressive surgery to remove it (and came through other side as if nothing had happened) but the pathology came back as being very nasty. So we then had the decision to make as to whether or not to go down the chemo route. Not an easy decision.

There are certain types of cancer (such as lymphoma) that have well established protocols for chemotherapy and on a whole the dogs respond well by going into remission or at least buying them some decent time. Then there are other types of cancer (such as osteosarcoma ie bone cancer) where chemo is used but is done after radical surgery (amputation) and will usually buy the dogs a few extra months at the most. I have always said I wouldnt hesitate to give it to my dogs in the first instant but wouldnt entertain the thought in the latter. So what to do in our case? Unfortunately with mammary cancer its not so clean cut. There are well established protocols and chemo is recommended, but while the experts think it helps there is no definate proof as to its affect on overall survival. Add in the factor that dogs tend to cope with chemo alot better than humans without the same extend of side effects, but side effects still exist none the less..
I know there are those that feel to go down this avenue is selfish etc etc etc, but after much deliberation I realised I would beat myself up more over not trying the chemo than I would over any side effects (we can always stop it after all!), and so we started a single drug protocol last week.

Unfortunately with the chemo drug that is required for this type of cancer (doxorubicin) about 10% of dogs can develop severe gastroenteritis 2-4 days following treatment, and you guessed right..Hollie's fallen into that 10%. So I spent last weekend with a very sick dog, to the point I thought we had hit the end, but in true Hollie form she bounced back a few days later and is now back to her old self. She's a fighter is my Hollie. So now I have the decision as to what to do in a few weeks when shes due for her next dose, but at least forewarned is forearmed and we can take precautions next time. Wish us luck!