Five Months

Well, my 88 year old Mom had heart surgery last week and seems to finally be recovering. At her age, it's going to take some time. Yesterday, we transferred her to a rehab facility where she can slowly heal and start exercising her heart, lungs, and muscles. The good news is, she has a new heart valve and single bypass and is in otherwise very good health for her age. So, her prognosis for a few more years is very good. I am making no progress in training the girls, but they are holding up very well as I spend long hours at the hospital.

My original plan for my dogs was to finish Skookum's CDX title this year so she would qualify for a VCD2, and also work on a TDX for her and a TD for little Cricket so both girls could enter the National Specialty Tracking Test in Kentucky. I am not sure that is going to happen now, but it might if the weather holds over the winter to get out and practice. In the meantime, Skookum has an appointment next week to be spayed, so will need some recovery time for that. I am going to try to get Cricket to an agility class starting next week and catch up a bit on our training goals.

Four Months

Sometimes life is not fair and you just have to roll with the punches. On Saturday, mom Skookum entered her first agility trial since January. She is still packing about 4 pounds too much, but we thought we should see where we were in our training. She still was impatient to hold the start line, bobbed out of a couple of weave poles, and missed a down contact on the dog walk on her three runs. However, her speed is coming back and her distance work was totally excellent. In the FAST class, she was one of only a few dogs to do the distance obstacles. She was well under time on the Jumpers course. I was looking forward to Sunday when I got an unfortunate call that my Mom had suffered heart failure and was in the hospital, so we packed up and went racing to the emergency room, camping outside the hospital in the old motorhome. Her condition is now stable, but she has come to live with me for awhile until heart surgery can be done. I have cancelled all my community and dog activities to assist her. We will just have to cope.