at the request of Susanne Pesterfield in continuation of a previous thread.......recently I went to a DR Chris Zink seminar about performance dogs. It was incredibly interesting......there was a lot of discussion about the effects of spay and neuter in performance dogs as well as common injuries. One of the interesting things she mentioned was to take your dogs weight and divide it by their height at the withers. If it is 2.5 or higher (which most of our dogs will) they are at higher risk for injury. They have more substance and therefore have more wear and tear when doing high impact activities ie. Agility. Not that we shouldnt be doing these activities with our dogs but as something to be kept in mind when training...... She also mentioned that shoulder and toe/foot injuries are amongst the most common. She also said something that very much struck a chord with me......she said to never disregard a dogs desire and ability to hide an injury. They are pack animals and DO NOT want to be the weakest so they will hide an injury until they can not possibly hide it any longer so by the time you see your dog is lame its BAD! I think that this is especially relevant to us as RR owners as our breed is very stoic.....I know as Im battling an injury in my girl..,,,,she has never shown an obvious sign :( There was much more information given on many topics but those were some highlights......they spay/neuter discussion was also very interesting But as my post is long Ill save that discussion. We also went through the conformation of the dogs at the seminar and discussed strengths and weakness of them in terms of performance. If anyone ever has the chance to see Dr Zink I highly recommend it! It was very informative and was very helpful in terms of understanding your dog!! Heres a pic of my girl on the dog walk in agility!
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 15:00:59 +0000
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