Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Status - Seven

Seven is lame all of the time now.  The remaining middle toe is gnarly and twisted, but she is still the most driven, energetic, and tenacious greyhound on the planet.  She is constantly under foot, in the way, and poking her nose where she is not needed. The limping doesn't slow her down at all. She is on Deramaxx and Gabapentin. I guess it is keeping her from being much worse.
I think Seven runs more in the house than she ever has..... maybe because she does not have agility as an outlet anymore. She and Maddie get pretty wild wrestling and playing bitey face and then Seven zips down the hallway and from room to room upstairs where we have carpet. She is so crazy sometimes! I'm glad the pain does not seem to bother her, but I wonder if she is making it a lot worse much faster than she should. Occasionally we sprint her across the backyard a few times since I would assume straight lines are better than the crazy turns she does in the house. But, she puts her all into every sprint, of course.  I have not figured out a way to get her to lope instead.
Swimming season is here!  We try to swim her twice a week for 15 minutes.  Seven is a beast as long as she has a life jacket on.  I made the mistake of trying her without it recently.  I think she knew better because she hesitated which she never does, but she eventually did as I asked and promptly went under water and had to be lifted out. I think she does something weird with her hind legs and paddles them underneath her body inefficiently.  Whatever, she does.... it does not keep her afloat!  So we won't try that again!
I so miss running her in agility.  All of my girls and Travis are/were nice to run, but Seven was super nice. Ferrari nice.  Fancy, expensive show horse nice.  I'm pretty sure she is missing agility as well. She is pretty frustrated when Maddie gets to train and she does not. I see glimmers of acceptance... maybe.  Occasionally when Maddie trains, Seven will walk off to nose around or eat grass instead of chewing on the fence.  I usually just leave Seven home with a stuffed Kong.  She is accepting of that arrangement.

I rarely take her to agility trials anymore. Only if I have to.  I'd love to tote her around and just let her say hi and weasel treats from friends, but if my husband is home, I leave her with him.  He usually does something nice with her.
It kind of bugs me that Seven was such a super star with filming "Pain and Gain" and with her awesome agility record and now there is nothing.  It was just so immediately over.  At least it doesn't seem to bother her.

Here she is getting beat up by her sister while she sleeps. Seven is a hard sleeper!