Poor Sparkle has been lame and has had to see her physio a couple of times over the last week. Her first rib needed to be manipulated and she had muscle spasms in her shoulder and neck. We think it was jumping out of the van that did it, I don't often let her jump out but assumed that because she was landing on grass it would be ok...apparently not! I have decided to give her a proper rest from agility for a month and then build her up again. She hasn't got any shows entered and hates a lot of the winter indoor venues so that makes it easier to rest her! She will be ten at the end of January (my baby can't be that old!!) so I will be careful with bringing her back slowly.
I'm hoping that she will be fine when I start running her at agility again but it is always at the back of my mind that she is injury prone and getting older! We have always had a gut feeling on when to retire our other dogs. Brax was retired at 11.5 years old when her eyesight started to go, Brodie was retired at 12 as lower height was disappearing and he is a teeny medium so I would never have asked him to jump higher again. Brooke was retired at 10 years old due to the weakness in her shoulder and although she is still running like a nutter we didn't want her to have the impact of jumping. She is now 11.5 and struggling with her eyesight in some situations. Mantrailing and hoopers (in good light!) are great for her!
We have also found that the longer the older dogs have off agility the harder it is to get them back into condition again. Their muscle tone drops soooo fast! So with Spark I'm going to give myself a kick up the butt to do lots of conditioning work to help on top of her usual walks. Watch this space!
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