Almost a year without posting an update here! The crew has grown and changed and they had a really spectacular year.
The new job working in rehab as a technician and working through to get my CVT took up and continue to take up a majority of our time. Mando and Joule spend the most time with me at work and get pulled to do demos, take videos to send exercises home, or anything else they can volunteer their time for. The other dogs mostly come when they have something that needs to be addressed.
In August Gigi had a revision to her hock surgery from 3 years prior. She had a couple joint injections and was feeling really good, but suddenly after playing outside seemed to have some swelling and we found out it was infected and she was having a suture reaction after doing a culture. A second surgery, a bunch of antibiotics, and some more crate rest later she’s a fully functioning dog again. She spends most of her time hanging out on the couch with Josh and Domino. Domino had a very non-exciting year and we are happy to maintain that.
Mando did a lot of training (as much as my schedule would allow) and we tried hunt tests for the first time going 5/5 for his senior hunter title. The last leg was probably my favorite, because we drove down to Missouri to enter the hunt test at the National Specialty and I haven’t been anywhere near the National since 2015. He also got his WDX that day. He spent some time this fall hunting, trying out dove hunting with me and my dad and doing some woodcock and grouse hunting as well as some pheasant game farm hunting (he did flush three wild pheasants out of season while we were dove hunting which was cool!). There weren’t much for birds but he worked his butt off. He’s currently working on maintaining conditioning for hunting season and is, as his rehab doctor says, “Thiccc with three C’s”. He just finished a rally class and we hope to continue that and some agility, and are working on nosework too. Mando is also working on retriever hunt test skills so we can do some of those this year plus fine tuning some of his other hunting/hunt test/field trial skills, and is trying really hard to convince me I need a labrador someday (only because he can’t run retriever field trials).
Joule did some agility last year, and took her first trip to a game farm and had an absolute blast. I’m hoping to get her out hunting with Mando some, but have work to do to get her there (not fair to him if she isn’t steady). She took a CGC class and just can not keep it together when a friend is close enough to touch, she just has to touch them. If I cared more, I’d put more effort into that, but I enjoy her overt friendliness to people. She has been growing up and the more she grows up the more I adore who she is becoming. She finished her health clearances and will be bred to Mando this year. She’s working on nosework and barn hunt, hoping we can enter some things this spring!
We added another little beast named Kirbee, and she was intended to be a field trial dog but has had to have somewhat of a career change after doing preliminary OFA’s and finding a transitional vertebrae that is asymmetrical. Her rehab vet said that doing high impact sports was not in her best interest physically, and that she didn’t recommend starting them and having to teach her how fun they are only to take them away. She is doing nosework and barn hunt with Josh and I’m determined to make this his “in” to dog stuff. I was giving her time to grow up so her bird exposure has been minimal and we will continue to work on more “safe” sports for her.
Hopefully I can remember to update on the status of the whole crew more frequently!
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