Much better

Thankfully things have been going a bit better recently and I have been building Moll's exercise back up gradually.  We have now progressed to off lead exercise again!  The first time she came off lead was probably the first time for over a month so she went wild and no birds in the park went un-chased for several minutes.  She did calm down after a few minutes of madness and started to listen to me a little more.
I was concerned she would damage herself running like a mad thing - but she seems pretty sound now with only a very occasional glance behind her as if she has a slight twinge.
Molly was a good girl today we went for a walk over the fields which is a challenge as she is a bit obsessive about chasing birds (so I often take the cowards approach and stick to the park) she firstly saw a crow on the ground, tensed ready to go after it, but came when I called her instead a short while later a second crow flew across in front of her and she tensed. watched it, but turned and came to me instead.
I did put her back on the lead for the more challenging hunting areas but was otherwise really pleased with her!!
 

Poorly girly

The last few weeks we have got rather more familiar with the vets than either of us really wanted to. 
Things started with another upset stomach which after seeming to respond to a day of starving got much worse as we went into Sunday evening with runs and sickness and then just after midnight got very very much worse with a pool of blood.  Thankfully we are not far from an out of hours vet and whilst I have no wish to ever use them again, I am very glad they were there.  She had a series of injections to settle her stomach and we had to visit my regular vet on Monday morning where they gave her yet more injections and some tablets. 
Being ill had really taken it out of her and she was pretty flat all week, only regaining her bounce on Saturday morning when I was pleased that she finally felt well enough to steal my socks and slippers. 
We had a nice weekend - right up until the point on Sunday evening when she suddenly yelped and then stood very still.  She was very, very unhappy all night, mostly just shaking and sitting very still so we had another monday morning visit to our vets.  They felt the pain seemed to be in her right hip so gave me painkillers and told me to rest her. She was also booked in for x-rays to check for visible injuries and they found nothing.  Of course nothing is straightforward and after only a couple of days her stomach was bad again so I had to stop the painkillers.  Her stomach did not improve after a day or so, so another vet visit, a whole lot more medicines and more rest. 
Bearded dogs and liquid medicines do not go well together and I am sure she ended up wearing more of it some days.  Thankfully her stomach has finally cleared up and her pain is reduced to the occasional yelp so hopefully she will soon be fully mended and we can have a few weeks without a vet visit.

Progress

Agility this week was great!!  We stayed on the same set of obstacles for the whole evening (just six jumps) but we did them in different orders, practiced different turns and pull throughs and even managed the ever elusive "wait" at the start.

Best of all Molly listened to me the whole time - we were not perfect but I was so pleased with the attention she paid me and the sheer enthusiasm she has now got for agility - she really does love jumping and has a great time when she is there.  Even when we were stood around working out the correct way to turn for various jumps she stayed with me.

On a homelier note she appears to have fallen in love with Sydney at her daycare.  The two of them have been seen curled up on an armchair together on a number of occasions as well as adopting the kennel in the garden as their very own home.  Here is her beloved in all his glory - I am sure you can see the attraction!!

Woohoo

Last night was our first week at agility for far too long - I think we have missed 3 weeks and in that time the nights have drawn in rapidly so much that it was dark when I headed over there and we did the full session under the club floodlights.

I was expecting Molly to have taken a bit if a step backwards with the missed weeks but she was great, paying attention, listening to me and only ran off once when there was another dog running wild and she went and did a couple of quick zooms with him before coming back to me (long before the other dog returned to his owner) so I could even have a smug moment about that.

The second course we had a go on seemed quite complex but once I had understood how I needed to move and the commands I needed to give we actually ran it perfectly twice - five fences and a tyre arranged in a way which meant lots of tight turns!!  I was really pleased with Molly - and she was quite pleased too since I had remembered the liver cake to reward her with!

Poorly

Not had a great week or so since my last entry as Molly must have picked up some sort of bug and has had a poorly stomach.  She seemed fine at one point I started food again and after a couple of days she was ill again so reintroduced food even more slowly the second time.  The good news is now she seems fine and has been eating everything and anything.

As she has been off colour we have not been to agility or other training and tonight was our first attempt to return to the park.  I decided I would give her lots of treats when we got near the corner she had previously been nervous about - unfortunately she decided to pre-empt me and stopped long before we got to the corner!!

Molly has been delighted to see her lovely Auntie H a few times recently.  She gets very excited when she sees her and then cuddles up to tell her all about how poorly she has been - never sympathise with a poodle cross!

.... and a new problem!

As Molly was still limping now and then we stayed away from the park until Tuesday when we went back to training class.  She was happy and bouncy as we started our pre-training class walk - right up until the point we went into the field before the one she was stung in.  At this point she ran back to the entrance and stood look back towards the cars.  Even when another dog came through for her to play with she had a quick play and then returned to the entrance.  Took me a few seconds to realise she had decided not to go this way as last time she had been hurt.  Clever reasoning I guess even if slightly flawed but as those fields really are the best and safest it is something we are going to have to try to resolve.

Training class on a very windy night after almost no run at all was ....... interesting!!  She was somewhat like Tigger on speed as she bounced and jumped around, at least I can confirm she is not unhappy in the classes.  As she was so distracted I stayed close to her on the stays and was pleased that she did those perfectly. 

She is also making progress on her bird obsession and although does still get excited and screech at times will usually now transfer attention back to me pretty quickly and has started to check in with me more. 

Ouch!

On Tuesday evening I took Molly for her usual off lead run before training class and as she was running she suddenly yelped and sat down chewing the back of one of her back legs.  It looked like she had been stung in the muscle of her leg and it clearly hurt a great deal as she was limping quite badly.  I let the trainers know we were going home and went and gave her a piriton which hopefully helped a little.

Several days on she is still occasionally not putting full weight on the leg so either poodley dogs are very wimpy indeed or it was a bad sting.

Despite that though I came out of the back door yesterday to find this:

.... and yes that position is every bit as precarious as it looks.  She is balancing with her back legs on the side of a paving slab and one of her front feet on the garden bench - and she is eating grass - despite there being a garden full of grass she has had to somehow climb there to eat that particular bit of grass!!