First rubble training

We had our first rubble training yesterday. We started easy, building up motivation and the exercises were familiar to Riva so it was really easy for him. Still, the environment was new and I was really pleased to see how comfortable he was moving on the rubble right from the start.

I also got a message yesterday that the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue task force Monica and Zima, Riva's grandmother, belong to had been deployed because of hurricane Katrina. We wish for a safe trip to them!

Herding pictures

Hansu put up some herding pictures on her homepage. These were taken in May and that was Riva's first exposure to ducks... and they survived it ;-). The other dog in the pictures is Xena, you can read more about her at Snowtime's pages.

Riva & Xena herding

Thanks Hansu!

Massage by Minna

Riva had an appointment with a physical therapist on Wednesday. I suspected that there might be something wrong because he was so one sided in flanking around the sheep and sure enough, his right side was a lot tighter than the left. This is consistent with his trouble in flanking to the counterclockwise direction where he would have to flex his right side. The probable cause for the soreness is Karma, who likes to play rough and to tackle other dogs at full speed :-(. The good news is that the problem had not had time to develop into very bad. Riva seems to have responded well to the massage therapy and seems more relaxed now. I'm curious to see how much difference this makes in working sheep to the more difficult direction.

I got intructions on how to stretch him after more strenuous exercise to prevent similar problems in the future. We are lucky, a friend is a professional animal massage therapist and a very good one, too. She has also worked with the Finnish agility world championship team.