Today is 37 days since Tendai’s amputation and he went back to hydro for the first time. Jumped in the pool like a crazy thing, one thoughtful lap where we could see him working out how to adjust his new body, then BOOM. Six lengths at full speed. Moral of the story (again): train every life skill you can think of; you never know when you’ll need it. In other new, Thandi’s retrieve is starting to take shape. She dumped me this afternoon for our obedience trainer and had a ball.

Boring update first. I did some more Front training with Lupe and we are starting to make good progress! I'm almost vertical now, position is getting much much better. The worst of Onyx's season seems to have passed. I actually used her as a stooge dog today and no one seemed to notice she was in season. I also re-introduced her to Lupe and he isn't really harassing her or losing his mind which is fantastic. More interestingly I am training a wirehaired dachshund at the moment for a client. He is reactive towards women that walk towards him/give him any kind of spacial pressure. I filmed this video today for the client but I thought you might like to see it too. It is a bit of my own bastardisation of Alex Lato's TBRR approach so not a mainstream method which is kind of interesting.

While I was floundering around looking for a goal with Thandi, my 10yo boy dog, Tendai, fell and broke his leg. X-rays indicated osteosarcoma, which was confirmed and he had his front left leg removed three weeks ago. It’s quite a journey, and amazing to see how he’s adapting. All the conditioning work we’ve done over the years is paying off: he’s strong, and he doesn’t have to learn the physio exercises from scratch, which is making rehab much easier than it might have been. So Thandi now has a goal - learn as many conditioning exercises as possible.

Feel free to talk about anything here. Have you ever won anything? I just got a $250 gift card for referring another business to some software we use 😳 I feel like I've won a prize.

I had decided to make this all about SAR but will leave off with small brag as we qualified UDX first time out on the weekend - would have did it again on the sunday but strong winds took the dumbbell away and she missed the jump. Still the title and 3 trophies for the weekend is not bad for her first trial.