Agility Dog Is Injured - What Now?
It's taken me forever to write this lines, but I guess it's time now. So, as mentioned in my previous post, we are dealing with our first real agility injury.
We all say that we know doing a sport with our beloved dogs carries risks and I am sure most of us do everything we can to minimize that risk. But the truth is that when it really happens, your entire World turns upside down. Well, at least for me it did. Suddenly Tani and I are not only having a break from agility that we love, we are getting bored at home, away from walks, swimming, playing and everything that we love to do together, chewing our hair on a couch and feeling sorry for ourselves. Because agility is a way of life, it's our social life, our friends, our passion and although it's not everything in life, it is a huge part of it. Well, that was until I realised feeling sorry for myself is really not helping my dog who doesn't have a clue of what the hell is wrong and why we are suddenly sitting at home getting fat. So it was time for a change.
First I have to underline Tani's injury is not too serious, it's one of those micro tears on a muscle that are not painful while the dog is on a rest, only hurt with activity and take forever to heal properly, but she should be OK in a few months or so. Unfortunately, as always, timing is horrible because it means missing our qualifications and for the first time not going to EO and not trying to qualify for AWC. But, OK, no more self pity, the important thing is for her to recover fully and that's the reason why I'm writing this post in the first place.
Lucky for us, even though our social life without walks with friends, training and competitions is pretty much based on FB, agility community is powerful and I never felt that so strongly before. We might have our issues, dramas and gossip a lot, afterall it's pretty much a female sport, but I was really touched by support from agility friends all over the World offering to help with advice or just writing us their nice wishes, thank you all from the bottom of my heart! So that's one thing to be grateful for.
Another thing is, situations like this can help you to become a better teacher, handler and a better person. I am using my spare time learning a lot about injuries, prevention and rehabilitation, conditioning and so on. I have always been interested in these things and did have basic knowledge about them of course, but occupying myself with ideas for tricks, massages, therapies and supplements that could help Tani is very therapeutic for me as well. And it's definitely better than self pity! I don't know how much all these things will actually help, but in a few days I noticed that my energy was more positive and with my spirit up I was in a far better position to have a good influence on Tani as well. Afterall, she has no idea what is going on, what to do with her excessive energy and if I completely forgot that we do agility and go for walks because we both enjoy it.
So, with help from a great team of vets, we are now on a road to recovery and nothing can stop us. We have a programme of excercises and Tani is over the Moon with joy to do SOMETHING again. We also do massages and will soon start with hydro therapy and i will document it and make a video or a few of them. Anyway, life is not over if you take a break and breathe, sometimes it's OK to stop, look around you and have a reality check. It's a hard thing to do, but I really think when all of this is over we will be stronger than ever.
