save the pit bull, save the world.

Another state park for Stevedog and I! My experiences with state parks have been a mixed bag, but this place was very nice. There were full color maps available (a step up from my black and white computer printout), and the blazing both was very thorough and actually matched the map. Refreshing! Not the most exciting hiking– all the trails we were on were wide, smooth, and gravelled with the exception of a small stretch of the “difficult” Janie Trail– but it was a beautiful day, the birds were singing their heads off, and I couldn’t have been happier to be out.

Pretty blazes!

The whole place was very well maintained.

Big tree.

SO MANY FLOWERS!

Alarm tail. That log was very suspicious.

Even the rough trail had stairs.

Oh happy day, there was a POND!

Shakeyoff collie!

Whole Flickr Set.

We have an Appalachian Trail hike planned for next Saturday. The weather better cooperate! I’m very excited. While I enjoyed my state park hike, I really do prefer the tougher, rockier hiking we tend to find on the Appalachian Trail. Although I will admit, my knees were much happier with this relatively flat, gentle excursion.

Luce’s bloodwork came back just fine. She had the very slightest of elevations in one of her liver values, but in an older dog, it’s not anything to get excited about. I’m just going to feed her more and take her back in and reweigh her in a few weeks to see if I’ve put the weight back on her.

Also from the realm of Good News, she was not sore at all this morning! She was a bit stiff when she got off the couch last night to go get a drink, but she walked right out of it. This morning, not even stiff. I did give her a dose of Rimadyl last night with dinner (I would have given it before we went if I’d thought of it), but I’m really happy with how good she looks today after all the swimming she did last night. I should take her swimming more often.

I took Luce in to work tonight to have a bleeding wart on her ear checked. She’s accidentally lost 3 1/2 pounds in the last month. The obvious answer is being at the kennel, but I’m neurotic about her so I sent out bloodwork just to be sure. This dog is my heart and soul. There can’t be anything wrong with her.

The doctor gave her heart a good listen. She still has her arrhythmia, but nothing has changed and her pulses are strong and synchronous. She hasn’t had bloodwork in over a year, so it’s not a bad thing to check anyway. She’s 9 1/2 already. I do not accept this.

Afterwards, I took her and Steve over to the agility barn and then swimming. She loves to swim, and I perhaps let her overdo it just a bit, but she was so happy. I hope she’ll be able to walk in the morning. They should not be allowed to get old.

This weekend was our flyball region’s first tournament to be held on Sprinturf indoor sport turf. The facility has been growing increasingly popular for agility trials, and some clubs decided to try it for flyball. I loved it.

Usually we run on rubber matting taped down over poured concrete. The quality of the matting differs from tournament to tournament. Tuffspun is the best, but it is expensive, and a lot of times only the actual lane and maybe a strip on either side of the immediate lane in the runback area is the nice cushy matting. They put other matting down that isn’t as soft or as nice. Laying mats, taping mats, cleaning mats, and then rolling them back up at the end of the tournament isn’t that much fun. Spending the whole weekend walking and standing on poured concrete isn’t that much fun.

And Steve rips his poor feet to absolute hell. The skidboots work fine in the front, but his back feet are a mess. I have to wrap them in Vetwrap (or Powerwrap, which is better), but even still, he burns through the wrapping. I’ve tried with Liquid Bandaid before each race, but he ends up with bloody feet. And it’s not just a little pad burn, it’s big holes in his main foot pad. And when I do wrap him, even though I cut them off after every race (otherwise he’d just chew them off- he’s not a fan), he ends up with rubbed sores on the outsides of his middle toes from the nails next to them rubbing. And that’s if I can get the wraps to stay on.

I hate it.

This turf, though? Wow. I didn’t wrap his hind feet at all, just kept an eye on them. Even though he has the remainders of a big hole from our last tournament three weeks ago in one pad (it’s healed over, but I imagine that it’s still somewhat compromised and not as tough as it would normally be), his feet were great. They’re not the least bit pink or tender looking.

I put his boots on him in the morning yesterday, but then figured I’d try him without and see what happened. Nothing happened. He ran barefoot all yesterday afternoon and all day today and his feet are totally healthy and happy. Plus he ran his first 4.0 in the pack, which made me very happy. (He’s run tons of 4.0s and a fair number of 3.9s in start. He’s happier in start, and he runs cleaner because he doesn’t get so worked up by the dogs running before him. Once a start dog, always a start dog! In his heart, anyway.)

We actually practice on Sprinturf, and I never have problems with his feet there, but I wasn’t sure how that would translate to running a full tournament on it.

I really hope that people had a positive experience at this tournament and liked the venue and that other clubs choose to hold their tournaments on the turf. It’s not a good venue for hot weather because it’s not air-conditioned and even though there are exhaust fans, it’s not well ventilated. We’re talking about moving our tournament there next year.

Penny and Memphis showing off their skills on the turf. And yes that was a bad pass.

Futurepuppy was born yesterday! (On Star Wars Day!) A litter of seven pups. Two females, both blue merle. Of the five males, two are black and white (one is a spitting image of daddy), two are regular blue merle, and one is blue merle with a ton of black on him. If I were picking just on colors and had my choice, that dark merle would be it. He’s so neat looking.

Mama and babies are all doing well. I am so excited to watch them grow from hamsters to puppies! And then one special puppy from pipsqueak into big bad Border Collie.

I’ll post pictures when I can. Today is FLYBALL DAY. Steve is very excited.

This photo is kind of a lie. I’m working on teaching him to put his chin down on command. Uh, specifically for photo ops. He’s not generally a recreational layer-arounder, but sometimes I want him to look like that because, well, it’s cute.