Friday, November 14, 2003

In which we finally provide an update

 
I apologize for having waited so long to update my blog, but I have a good excuse: my oldest basset hound Connie (she was fourteen in September) is pretty much circling the drain right now. I'm fairly certain that I'll be putting her down in the near future. I don't want to be maudlin, or to dwell on it, but it *is* a very sad thing. Connie was my first dog as an adult (I got her in graduate school, when I started writing my dissertation), and when she was younger she and I did everything together. She represents my AKC title-hungry phase of life: she has a conformation championship, advanced obedience titles, and a tracking title. She's very smart and quirky, and she's added a lot to my life.

The Connie details *are* relevant to the PhylBlog, because it was just before the start of Carol Campion's trial three weeks ago that Connie started to decline. As I mentioned in my last entry, I had planned to go to Carol's to have a lesson with Julie Simpson on Thursday evening, another one on Friday morning, and then stay over for her trial (which Julie judged) on Saturday and Sunday. As scheduled, I arrived at Carol's on Friday afternoon--it's more than a four-hour drive for me. I had decided in advance that I wanted to work on Phyl's outrun and on shedding, since shedding had become my obsession after the last trial. Julie was very helpful: she watched Phyl's outrun and made the rather interesting comment that when Phyl doesn't know exactly where her sheep are she turns her head in and then starts to follow that path, rather than knowing to kick out and go bigger when she's not sure where she's going. She just made the standard suggestions--blow Phyl out when I see her head turning in, etc.--but it was good to hear that she didn't think that Phyl was being drawn in by her eye on her outruns. (I've never thought that, either, but some people have suggested it to me as a possibility.)

Julie spent most of her time with me working on the shed: she used all of our Friday time for a shedding lesson, and a good portion of Thursday as well after we finished with outruns. Julie likes dogs who come in very fast and hard on the shed. Phyl still doesn't seem to understand the concept of shedding in any genuine way, and as a result she comes in tentatively. Julie helped me set up my sheds better, and she showed me a game whereby a group of sheep are split, the dog is allowed to work one of the groups very fast to encourage enjoyment, and then the dog is sent around so that its group tries to join the split-off group. As the sheep are getting close to regathering, you flank your dog around and then say excitedly "here, this." If all goes well, the dog learns to come in fast and hard on running sheep and keep control of them. Phyl caught on to the game quickly and seemed to like it. I've since tried to recreate it on my own sheep, and I've had no problem doing it. I think it'll be good for Phyl's development as a shedding dog, and learning how to do it in and of itself made the Julie lessons worth the price of admission.

The reason that my Connie problems are relevant to this blog entry, however, is that she stopped eating on theThursday night after my first Julie lesson, and she didn't want to eat on Friday, either. You'd have to know Connie to realize how serious this is--this is not a dog who *ever* has missed a meal without a life-threatening reason. In addition, she started having a problem standing: she's been wobbly on her rear for awhile, but this (probably due to the trip in a cramped crate) was substantially worse. I panicked and didn't think I could be on the road with her if she kept declining, and by that point I was worried enough that I didn't think I could do a good job handling Phyl in any case. So I called my vet, made an appointment for the next day (Saturday), and I really believed that I'd probably be putting her down at that time. So I drove all the way home on Friday, missing the first day of Carol's trial. My vet urged me to try Connie on prednisone, to see if it had any effect. I was a little dubious, but I agreed. (And my vet was right, because the pred worked for about three weeks--now, unfortunately, we're right back where we were then.)

Since I'm a trial fanatic through and through, I decided to drive all the way back to Carol's early Sunday morning as a day trip, leaving Connie and the rest of my unentered dogs at home. I was still fairly distracted, but I'm not sorry that I ran Phyl: I messed up her outrun (I think) by whistling to her when she didn't need it (WHEN will I learn to trust her?), but she had a pretty nice fetch and good driveaway. I completely goofed up my handling on the crossdrive, mostly because I couldn't figure out where the line was (I hadn't been there to watch others), and I also let the line fall apart from the crossdive to the pen. We had a nice clean pen but no time for a shed. (And that was too bad, since I had them sort of set up and I really think we could have pulled it off.) It all sounds pretty raggedy as I describe it, but I had a good set of sheep and I felt that Phyl was working really well for me--I'm cutting myself slack for the bad handling, because emotional turmoil is hard to shove aside. That trial made it very clear to me that I need to focus my attentions on learning to handle the crossdrive well--I mess them up much more than I do them correctly, and it's time that I concentrated on learning that skill in a systematic way. So that's what I'll be spending time on this winter, assuming that we get a break with the snow this year.

Tomorrow I'll be going to Sam Furman's trial in Richmond. I had planned to go tonight, but I'm on very late in the day (51 out of 57), and since Connie is again eating badly I'd much rather have her on the road for one day than for two days. I'm looking forward to this trial. Sunday will be Phyl's fifth birthday, and maybe we'll have some birthday luck for that run!

posted by Heather Nadelman