Another first for Liz

Unless you knew Lizzie and saw her in person, I am sure no one would understand why I keep making such a big deal of her good behavior lately, but we had another first today. On the way home from the vet I stopped at Petsmart to give Lizzie an outing and to work with her in public. A new Petsmart, one I had never been to. We had to walk past the CATS on the way in, which is usually a pass for the border collie brain to leave. My dog who had been in the car for a couple of hours with all that border collie energy just building up looking for a place to go. A recipe for disaster you say? Well, just after we got in an older gentlemen was watching Lizzie and came up to me and said it is remarkable how well that dog behaves and how amazing she performs. WHAT???? I can truly say that is a first for anyone to say anything along those lines when they see me with Liz out in public. We have always got a lot of comments, just not THOSE kind, LOL!

I feel like a kid at Christmas who got the gift they had been asking for for years. Three years of working with Lizzie, more classes, more homework, more training then all of my other dogs to date COMBINED, and over night she is turning into a real doggie. I am sure we will have a lot of back sliding, but gosh, just such a rush to see all that we have worked on finally paying off.

Good news for Breeze too. Seems she has hurt her back. Breeze has always compensated for her hips by transferring her weight to her back and she gets big kinks and trouble in her back. So the Dr. felt her knee is sound, her hips are a little out of alignment, but they always are-they are not very out of alignment though, and everything else looks OK. So the prescription is more core exercises to strengthen the muscles on her sides by where the tuck is to help protect the back, and just cut back her activity 30% from where I had her when she got hurt and then go slower building her back up. The Dr. feels that the agility is still good for her and that she just did too much a little too fast.