Saturday, September 29, 2007

Forget that APDT trial! Poor Tara : (

Friday afternoon before we left for the trial, Tara and Orion were playing with sticks outside (as they do frequently), and Tara cut the back of her mouth behind her last molar on the right side when chasing the stick. She cried and cried and cried. It was horrible. She never cries. I gave her some arnica for pain, and calendula for healing, and headed out to pick up the cresteds I was transporting to MA for Saveadog anyway. I figured I'd drive down to MA and see how she was. So we dropped the chinese cresteds off at Shirely's house, then I brought Tara and Orion in to play with Shirley's dogs. Tara loves other dogs, and always loves to play, so I wanted to see how she acted. She was drooled thick drool excessively. I really don't think she got any splinters in her throat/mouth, the stick didn't look broken at all were she had stabbed herself with it, although there was some blood on it. The bleeding had stopped soon after the injury too, but it was quite clear that her mouth was still very sore. She didn't really want to play much at Shirley's and clearly was not her usual self. So we went to a vet in MA around 9:30 last night and got a note excusing her from the trial. She seems somewhat better today, but definitely not herself and still drooling excessively. I think I made the right decision to pull her from the trial, although it has cost us any chance of earning our RL1X this year or our RL3. But obviously her health and state of mind are more important than anything else.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Tara got her. . .

AKC Rally Excellent title today!!! Tomorrow we go back for fun (unless I decide sleeping is more important when my alarm goes off at 5:30am). She got an 84 and 2nd place. Woo-hoo! She is now Tamarack's Autumn Rain RE RL1 CGC! And after this coming weekend's APDT Rally trial in RI, we hopefully will have our RL2, possibly our RL3, possibly 8/10 RL1X legs, and possibly 3/10 RL2X legs.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

We now have 2/3rds of our RE!

Way to go Tara! We got our 2nd AKC Rally Excellent leg today in North Conway, NH. She scored an 85/100 and placed 3rd out of 5 dogs. I'll take it. : ) It would've been a 95 and second if we didn't hit the damn jump again (that lost us 10pts - she never hits it when we practice! - at least she didn't take it down - I believe that would have been an NQ!), and it would've been a 98 and first if we hadn't had to redo the 3 steps backwards while heeling, I didn't really have her focus on the first try, and thought we might do better the 2nd time, and we did, but redoing a station "costs" 3pts. No complaints though, I'll take it. : ) Now we go for our 3rd leg and rally excellent title on 9/22 in Portland, ME.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Tara does it again!

We got our first Rally Excellent leg today! My puppy is so awesome! : ) She scored an 89 (with two redos - which lost us 6 pts right there) and got first place. There were 5 dogs in the Excellent A class today and only 2 Q'ed, the course was difficult with a moving stand right before a jump and a 360 left directly following the jump. The honor dog station was nerve-racking as hell, but we made it through. Yay Tara! We go for our 2nd RE leg tomorrow.