Welcome to Poppy's World

As we have run out of space to post pictures it was time to open a new Blog which can be found here:

http://poppycrew.vuodatus.net/

Sasha has been going to see a chiropractor , just to make sure her spine is in top condition after the accident.

The chiropractic did say she has some turn and stiffness in her spine which was expected due to her having to walk one sided for a while.

Sasha has also moved the “engine to the front” to ease out pressure on the injured back end.

The lady who treats her is very confident she will be able to return the normal usage of Sasha’s body and make her use her back end like is supposed to be used, push her forward with power.

Just after one session I could see a difference in how Sasha held herself and moved. She is pacing less and changing to trot lot quicker when the speed changes with must be a positive change. She has also started to sit like proper dogs do, not "puppy sitting" leaning on one side all the time, which is another positive change.

She also seems lot happier in herself in general.

At the weekend I went to see local Leo water rescue group in action.

There were 6 Leos doing their first session of the summer so some were very keen to get working some less so. The water is still pretty cold so some boys seemed to think they will wait few more weeks for it to warm up a little. Sasha has been swimming in the lake for few weeks now and she has not noticed the water temperature.

When Sasha sees water she puts her working dog brain on, and transfers to this slightly loopy doggie! She only has eyes for the water and when walking her next to the river she gets very worried about all rowers on the river. So in theory she should make a good Water Rescue Leo but she has a tendency to get overly excited and when this happens: She loses ability to hear anything so it will be a challenge to keep her under control, or actually get her under control in the first place!

I was going to take our water monster with me this weekend but the chiropractor told me not to . Sasha will not be able to start training until she has had the necessary sessions.

If we are allowed, I will take Sasha with me socialising even if she is not allowed to do anything more than a little dip in the water. The chap who does the training has already given me a wet suit to try on so maybe I will just need to assist until Sasha can join in the fun.

I will hopefully be able to take her to obedience training and ring craft even when she is doing the sessions with the chiropractor.

We have been working on a SIT-command too. Currently we are at the point that 80% time Sasha will stop what she is doing and sit down when told to do so,20% of the time she will hesitate a little but will sit down after a little delay (or repeated command) so for Sasha it is pretty good going fo far.

I thought it might work better to stop her on a sit instead of recalling her back as it seems recall is something she fails to do when there is more interesting things to run to.

We have struggled with her recall since after the accident as she was not allowed to go offlead for nearly 4 months and have forgotten the basics of recall and will just bolt off to say hello, chase the rabbits etc...

 We are yet to test the Sit-command offlead as Sasha is yet again not allowed to go off lead due to the chiro-work done on her but on lead she is pretty good.

Miihkali (the curly) was staying with us last weekend.

This was the first time I had both dogs with me and all went very well.

We had to separate them indoors as neither was going to lie down and relax if they were in the same area.

If one of them did, the other one was soon there and the play started again.

I have not been too well so couldn’t give them loads of exercise and this is why they had energy to burn, also I did not have energy to deal with them all the time so I had to take the easy way out and I will have to teach them how to behave indoors next time Miihkali visits.

Our neighbours were happy to see Miihkali again.

Miihkali was staying with us for 3 weeks right before we went to get Sasha and when we brought her home, our neighbours were asking where is the well behaved black dog - You swapped him to this nutter?

Here is a little clip of Sasha on the Beach:

It was the first time she was allowed to run as much as she wanted and leap about in the water.

It is funny how a totally normal thing like watching your dog to run can bring so much joy!

Especially after all she went through and how brave she was with it all. Ignore the squeaks Chris is making... I think he got little excited about it all as well

http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a2/nooraloo/?action=view&current=9koe30009.flv

Sasha has had her last check up xray...

All is well

I have my mum and Pena, Sasha's finnish "parents", visting this week and I have managed to take some pictures of Poppy and Sasha(and Chris) with Pena's nice camera.

I really now want a proper camera instead of my little automatic Canon that dies after few pictures.

Here are few of my pictures:

Poppy flying

Sasha Flying

Not much have happened here in Poppyland.

Sasha is doing great, she has her final xrays in weeks time.

Her movement is nearly back to normal and we have started building up her muscle.

Currently we try to go running twice a day, doing approx 2km at the time.

She is not yet allowed to go off lead, we must see the xray results first.

She also goes water treadmilling twice a week and this will be changed to swimming when the xrays show her pelvis has fully healed. I am trying to find a place I can start swimming her on top of the pool sessions as it will be very important to keep her well muscled to awoid any possible damage her non symmetrical pelvis might cause. We have been told often there will be no complications but obviously the angle of her hip has now slightly changed so there is a possibility of wear because of this. Saying that one new treatment for dogs with Hip dysplasia is to move the angle of the pelvis slightly(just like Sashas has moved)and this will give the hip better surface so she might not never have any problems because of the accident. The final xrays will show us exactly how has her pelvis settled and will tell us what to expect.

I have now dropped my second job I was doing on sundays so I will be able to do more with Sasha. Lot of the activities take place on sundays and because of my job I have never been able to take part, this year I decided it is time to consentrate on things I enjoy and want to learn! I have now worked two jobs for nearly 3 years so that I can fill one of my dreams(that is importing Sasha) so the second job had done it's job now .

I had entered Sasha to Crufts but unfortunately the hair on her bottom is not back so she will not be shown... I will give her few more months to recover and will then start looking at some shows we can enter her in. She is doing very well and I'm very pleased on how she has matured both physically and mentally.

I have added some new pictures to the february 2009 photoalbum.

The pictures are of Lotta enjoying the snow.

We have snow!!! Sasha absolutely loves it.

She has finally started her second season so we have had to take a break in the water treadmilling

Well it was only a month "late"(if a second season can be late rolleyes ;)but I have seen the signs for ages and have been waiting for it to start.

Instead of water therapy we have been going for long walks in the snow .

Unfortunately most of it has actually gone by this morning but we did manage to take some pictures before it went:

http://www.freewebs.com/poppycrew/apps/photos/album.jsp?albumID=3951397

Sasha is still progressing very well, her movement is getting better every day.

I have entered her to Crufts but I'm not sure we will be able to go as she is still sporting the "lion cut" and the hair on her bum has not grown back yet.

We still have nearly a month to go so I have not yet thrown the towel in to the ring!

If Sasha can not take part I will go by myself anyway, just to watch and make notes... and shop till I drop....

The other day I found a roll of film in one of my drawers (old style proper film!).

I took it to be developed and there were some real gems there.

These are actually final photos of my first Leo girl Bonnie so are very very special to me. I remember taking the photos but thought the film was lost forever and I was not expecting it to surface after over 5 years time!

It is really weird I found these photos as few weeks earlier just by accident I found a DVD with clips of Bonnie doing her funny tricks on it.

All of a sudden, little reminders of her are coming back to my life!

Maybe it is because I'm not having the greatest time of my life at the moment and she wants me to know she is still looking after me like she used to do when I was young.

Bonnie had to be put to sleep few weeks after these photos were taken as her legs went and she could not get up anymore. She had lost lot of weight and had a tumour under her chin but otherwise she seemed in high spirits so when the day came it was a shock to us all even though we knew she probably has not got that much longer with us.

She was my first Leo and will always have the most special place in my heart.

As it has been raining for days now we have had to think something we can do indoors.

Sasha has learned to turn around today!

She seems to find this trick loads of fun and gets a little bit too excited to think what she is doing! Quite good though, she got it first time round .

I was going to use the clicker and make her figure it out herself (so it would take us longer) but Sasha doesn't yet get the idea of clicker and gets frustrated and just walks off when nothing happens!

She seems to have very short attention span if there is no action to keep her interested.

At the moment I'm just working on giving her things to do that she enjoys(even if she doesn't do them perfectly) and after she has cheered up and remembers it is fun to do stuff with Mummy we can start fine tuning the commands.

She has also learned to come to a halt (I believe this is what is is called -come and sit on my left hand side), again she doesn't always come to a nice straight line but we can correct this later, at the moment I just want her to have fun!

We have also started to use a whistle to train recall and this is going pretty well too. I'm little worried for when we can let her off lead again as by then it will be nearly 3 months of lead walks! I think we will use long line to make sure she remembers what recall is about before letting her completely loose...

Here is a link to slightly dark video of Sasha's newly learned turn:

 http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a2/nooraloo/?action=view&current=2801009.flv

We are now going treadmilling twice a week.

At first Sasha did have a slight problem understanding she needs to walk even though the everything around her keeps still. After 5 sessions she is doing great, walks forward quite nicely, most of the time! She is heavy enough to stop the machine when she decides to stop but luckily she has not yet realised this!

She is also getting out of her depression and people who we meet on walks have commented that she looks so much happier again. I have noticed the difference but it is nice when people who do not see her that often notice that the sparkle in her eye is back!

I never realised how depressed a dog can get after an accident like this, even her expression changed and she was like a different dog behaviour wise. Luckily the old Sasha is now returning, especially after the water treadmill she has so much energy and is pestering me for the rest of the day, which I do not mind, it nice to have her back!

The other day I also noticed Sasha has gone noticeably bum hig again! The vet did say her growth plates are still open so she has some more growing to do, I do hope this is the last growth spurt she is going to do!

Peeking out of the tank

wearing her red "swimming suit" ready to get the water in

Here is a little video of Sasha running. She still moves funny on the broken side but according to the vet she could not be doing much better she currenly is. Many dogs have a very noticeable limp at this stage, she still has 6 weeks to ge before the fracture has healed and is not sore, meaning she will use the leg properly. There is obviously possibility of nervedamage and this can take up to 6 months to heal... So we are still very hopefull she will move correctly one day! I can also see she is a bit "floppy"... We have reduced her weight slightly now that it is fat and not muscle but I can see little more would not do her any harm seeing how her sides "roll" rolleyes

http://s8.photobucket.com/albums/a2/nooraloo/?action=view&current=210108007.flv

Sasha has had the second lot of xrays taken today to check on her progress.

Everything looked like it should look like.

There has been some movement of her pelvis but this was expected, when the dog lies on the damaged side the plates will give in a little and some movement inwards is totally normal.

She can now start walking on a water treadmill so I will need to get organised and find the nearest place that does it! We have quite a few dog pools but treadmills are not so common in this area.

Her movement is totally normal when she is pacing but the few times she has trotted she still has a limp. The vet has told us it will take approx 16 weeks for her pelvis to be healed so we still have 8 weeks to go before her pelvis is as good as it will be, not sore etc.

Here we come Crufts !!!

It has now been 6 weeks since Sasha had her operation.

She is doing great!

We now do lot longer walks and she even takes some steps running when she feels like it (and we naturally try to stop her).

My mum and brother came over for Christmas and Sasha was soooo happy to see them again.

She could not believe her eyes when my mum walked in to the room. She looked at her and clearly had to do a double take !

She was staring my mum and only when my mum got right next to her and she got to touch her did Sasha really believe she is here and bounced and kissed her for ages! This was the first time Sasha has seen my mum since September and it has cheered her up so much, it really has been good for her as I was getting little bit worried she is depressed because of all of this. Her tail has been wagging a lot more and she seems more interested in everything.

Sasha has also met a dog for the first time since the accident.

We were walking in the park and suddenly these two boxers come out of nowhere and start sniffing her and boxering around (if you have ever met a boxer you know what I mean).

I was little bit worried she might have some issues with other dogs as she has been growling when she sees a dog far away but we were hoping this was just a reaction to her feeling vulnerable and being in pain.

Luckily now that she is feeling better she is getting back to normal sociable dog she was before the accident.

She was very quiet around the boxers and did not even try to play but I'm not surprised really as it was dark and all we could see were these dogs jumping around us and making these very noicy sniffs and grunts(again a boxer thing).

Sasha did do a "bum up"- bounce when the boxers were walking away from us so I feel she will be just fine when she heals and gains back her confidence !

I have added a page for Lotta and also loaded some pictures we took of Sasha on xmas day.