Heartbreak for Chinzi!

Last week Wednesday, the 17th of September, roundabout 3pm... Chinzi had a very unfortunate accident. She cut her back paw open while playing with Levi. It was a freak accident, her foot suspectedly slipped in underneath the security gate and onto a wire sticking out a vibacrete block.

Bleeding profusely, she was rushed to the vet immediately, where the bad news greeted us that two of her tendons were completely severed, and a third cut 20%. She was immediately operated on, trying to save the tendons by stitching them immediately. She now has to be kept still for the next 6 weeks, which is an extremely difficult task. What breaks my heart is that she obviously cannot understand why she cannot run around and play as normal, so she cries and cries and cries. She has to take calming medicine for the first few days, just to aid in the acceptance of the splint on the foot and the keeping still.

She will probably be out of competition for at least 4 to 6 months. The collagen fibres that forms in between the severed tendon ends only allign themselves properly at 4 months post-operative, in which case actually only THEN exercise and movement can begin. It's going to be a very difficult task at the 4 week mark when her splint comes off to continue to keep her still, but we will be doing our very very best in order to ensure best chances at recovery. Once she is able to start slight movement, she will be going for hydrotherapy as well.

Although tendons can never heal 100% as they cannot grow back, we are hoping and praying for a miraculous recovery which will not affect her agility career, but at this time, we have no idea how this will affect her future, only time will tell.

A long road of recovery lies ahead...

Catch-up on 4 trials...

Over the last few weeks we had 4 shows, Liesbeek, Belgian, GSD and Breede Rivier. Chinzi's performance was consistent, but nothing special. At the Liesbeek show she had 10 course faults, missing both A-frame and Dogwalk contacts, running at 4.6m/s to still managed a 3rd place. In the Jumping we DQ'd on a tunnel.

Belgian show was much the same, although her speed was magnificant and she really worked well, she had faults in both rounds. Agility saw her come 2nd with 10 course faults again, this time two knocked bars, getting all her contacts, at a speed of 5.1m/s. Jumping was a magnificant round, a quite challenging course for the low grade, she ran 5.2m/s but very unfortunately knocked the very last bar to lose out on a qualification and only getting a 3rd placing.

At the GSD show she finally managed to get another qualification in Agility, coming first at a speed of 4.3m/s The weather became very bad, with very strong and icy winds, even blowing jumps over, so the Jumping round didn't go well at all. We had to redo the weaves 3 times and knocked a bar, so coming 3rd with 15 course faults, but still at 4.9m/s, with redoing the weaves, so perhaps our speed wasn't that bad at least. :)

The Breede Rivier Show basically rained out, but we managed to get one Jumping round in, it was too wet to chance it on the contacts. She again knocked the 3rd last bar, very sadly, just to miss out on a Q, coming 2nd and running 4.2m/s on a very tightly measured course.

Sadly, no video again. I'll have to appoint myself a video guy! :)

Flyball results for all these shows were great, Chinzi's team, the Boland Flyers taking 1st place every time, with a best time of 19.09 seconds. We're still aiming to break the 19 second barrier! Hopefully soon!