Shoofly Dogs Update

Just thought i'd post a little update on the dogs.

Spottie's doing well. She gets to do a little work here and there and is looking and feeling younger than her 10.5 years. I had her help with a lesson on saturday, working in tandem with a young dog, trying to get him excited and she had a ball - you'd sure never think she was over 6 or 7. I've been bringing her in the house to hang out lately and you can tell she thinks that's pretty cool. She gathers up all the toys she can find and just beams at me, like she's fallen into the land of milk and honey (bones and rawhide?).

Gael is feeling fine, fat and shiny. She'd blown her coat after her last heat and was looking extra scraggly to go along with the liver scare, but now she looks like a fat, black seal. Diet time for her now. I'll take her back to check her bloodwork soon.

Jet's been working her hiney off around the farm since Zac has been on light duty. She loves it and has stepped up to the plate nicely. I've never thought of her as a dog that needs a lot of work but she clearly is enjoying it and working really well because of it. I've even been working her and Zac together some, working on outruns and also using them both to push the flock through the chute for worming. That's fun and they're a good team. I'd like to do more when Zac gets back to full speed.

Zac's leg woes continue. I thought the PT was going well and maybe helping a tiny bit but now he's a little off on his good rear leg. He was lame on it the evening before i took him to PT but it cleared up overnight, so i thought it must be a foot bruise or sore pad. Then last week he was a smidge gimpy after he and Jet pushed sheep through the chutes for me, later that evening anyway, though it cleared again by morning. Yesterday i did his PT exercises with him and let him do just some gentle driving with the sheep and he was limping again after laying around cooling off. So, we're off to Dr Betts tomorrow, my go-to ortho guy and hoping he'll have some words of wisdom for us. I've not had Zac to him on this before (had to see someone else in the office last year when it first came up). It really is time for this to get cleared up, it's been going on almost a year now, for pete's sake.

Billy is doing very well with his training and i just adore him and he adores me. We're in love. :-) I'm not doing a whole lot with him, just take him out a little here and a little there. Saturday morning he was quite spectacular working the flock. Now if i could get him to quit eating vinyl dog toys! He's got a weird taste for them, thinks they're chewies or something.

Bart's bored. He's been a little gimpy on his right front leg off and on, and was very gimpy on it after i tried working him one evening last week, so he's on quiet time and rest. Those particular words aren't in the 7 month old border collie's vocabulary unfortunately. I'm trying very hard to not freak out and think he's got OCD. We'll start checking that out once i get this with Zac straightened out. For now, no playing "smear" with Billy (man, they play rough!) and keeping my fingers crossed, hoping he's just had some growing pains or worn his feet sore.

So that's the latest scorecard on the dogs, some good, some bad. And the latest news on Mossman is that he's quite the spectacular little dude for Denise these days! I'm looking forward to seeing him again soon. It's nice when things work out so well all around.