Well, no secrete the last two weekends we were having weave troubles and they got worse each run. At first I was just frustrated and thought it was a training issue. I thought she was practicing them wrong and that was the reason we had more and more difficulties.
On the day after the trial I noticed Breeze standing and her back looked really rounded upward (roachey) like a mad cat when she was standing and I had thought I had seen her left rear leg sort of stiff and not moving just right during the trial but sometimes I think I just imagine things so I had sort of pushed that out of my head. I did notice on the day after the trial that leg was definitely moving funny and she would hold it up and sort of out at a weird angle. When I laid her on her side she really fought me doing the stretches, and she loves her stretches. She also kept her back left leg flexed up and away from her body, very odd looking. When I tried to massage her she would flinch when I touched her back end, and kept putting her face by my hands trying to get me to not massage her.
I took her to the vet today and sure enough, her spine is way out of whack, her vertebra are all out of whack and she definitely is roaching her back. She flinched and was really not wanting to be examined and the vet was very sure she was in a lot of pain. Her left hip was way out of whack and she is holding that leg at an odd angle.
Poor Breeze, gosh I just feel so horrible for her. Can you imagine how it must feel to try to weave when your back has been thrown and is sore? Not to mention jumping and hitting contacts and turning tight in the air with a bad back? No wonder she seemed so off, and no wonder she was only trying to weave every third pole. I should have known because we have issues getting the entries of poles, but once she gets the entry or if we go the second time they are always great until this last two weekends. I think as the two weeks with that much agility wore on her back just started hurting more and more to the point she would not even try the weaves. I am so glad the last two runs I just went on past the weaves, I tried to load her but as soon as I saw it would not happen we went on.
So Breezie girl got an acupuncture and an adjustment and is on some pain meds and is getting ice packs, but she still gets to swim with the life vest so it helps support the back. We are supposed to give it until the end of the weekend and see how she is doing, she might be ok to go back and she might need more treatments and more rest, it will all depend on how she is feeling.
At Breeze's point in training it is so hard to tell, is she hurting, or are we having training issues? How do we get the weave entries trained without tons and tons of reps? I guess my gut feeling is that when she is doing weaves well, gosh they are gorgeous, she really does not know to do them very well once she gets the entries. It is just the entries that can suck, so maybe I just use three or four poles to train those (which is what I was doing...) and try to really think about training so that each repetition is doing something. I also think she is just not going to be allowed into the 21 inch weaves, all the classes have them because people are still switching over to the 24 inch poles, but I think they are just too hard on her, so not sure how I will handle that in classes but...now that all the trials we would do have 24 in poles there really is no reason to keep putting her into 21 inch poles.