Good News/Bad News

The Good News...I now have my own flocklet! Last weekend I brought home 4 ewes, a ewe lamb, and a wether lamb from my instructor. They are living at my boss' place, a short mile from my house. My sheep are dorset x cheviot, which seems to be an interesting cross: some of them favor the dorset in look and disposition, some favor the cheviot (*ahem*, running thru electonet), and the lambs are cute little muttley types. Dad was here and we put in a lot of work to build Ella a training pen. There was a wooden horse pen in place, so we put up some interior wire fencing and rounded it out to make an oval pen, about 60' by 90'.

I use Rae to move the sheep from their home paddock, down a little chute, and into the oval pen. Sometimes we gate sort; that is, when the neighboring goats aren't hanging around causing trouble. Other times we shed prior to pushing them down the chute. .

Last week Ella was getting to work 1-2 times a day, and was getting better each time out. Her flanks were shaped nicely (though still a little zippy), she was taking her downs well, and we were doing a lot of wearing. When she's excited she has a tendancy to overflank. It's not that she is loose-eyed, moreso that she's just not thinking as much as she ought to. When she settles down she comes in on balance nicely and walks confidently onto her sheep. She is very keen to get to their heads, so I often have to remind her to stay behind them and not sneak up to catch the lead ewe.

Rae and I have been working on a lot of paddock work, since right now I don't have big fields on site. For me, she has had a tendancy to get the zoomies when working up close, being slicey and fast. So we are working on corner work and on widening her out when she feels tense. I am also practicing shedding with her.

Sorry, Rae, no big field to work in here.

The Bad News...after working Thursday, Ella came in the house, got a drink, lied on the floor for 30 seconds, then got up nearly 3-legged lame...on her leg that had extensive shoulder repair!!! I freaked out. She walked it off a little, but was still very noticeably lame. By Friday morning she had improved, but I still could see that she was off. I took her in to the clinic and had everyone watch her go. The equine vet joked at how hard it was to watch a dog lameness exam vs. a horse, dogs being so much smaller and quicker! Everyone did see what I was talking about...a very subtle shortened stride and a mis-step when turning to her left. One vet manipulated her leg and we decided it was definitely that bad shoulder that was painful. Ugh.

I've been trying to contact her surgeon and am having a difficult time. Ella is 9 months post-op radio-frequency treatment of medial shoulder instability. All that means is that her "rotator cuff" was hamburger and needed to be repaired via arthroscopic surgery. She was operated on by the very famous Sherman Canapp at Veterinary Orthopedics Sports Medicine in MD. The rehab was extensive and included hobbles for 3 months, daily exercises, severe activity restriction (not allowed off leash for 5 months), and magnetic/laser/massage therapy.

Two days post-op. Hobbles on, scope portals covered by yellow Ioban. The bare patch on her thigh is where the laser was grounded.

The hobbles were to prevent shoulder abduction (moving away from the body) in order to allow the tendons to scar and tighten up the joint.

By September we'd worked back to some agility (no contacts or weaves), and she looked so good that I trialed her in a few runs. She ran very well for me, Q'ing and winning 3/4 classes, and earning her first title! Since then, she's been running, hiking, and playing ball at full strength. This incident is the very first time I've seen her off.

Photo by Carl Photography

I have been resting her and she seems to be getting better. One of these days I'll have everyone watch her go again. I need to see what Canapp says about all this. Should I be panicking? Will she need another surgery? If so, it's likely she'll need the "tightrope" procedure, which is to reconstruct the shoulder vs. just repairing it. Will that mean the end of working sheep and agility? Canapp has left me a message in which he kept using the word "tweak," so I'm hoping that it's not a big deal, but I need to discuss with him what I can look for to see if she needs to be hauled 6hrs back up to VOSM. I'm also going to get in touch with her sports rehab vet Chris Zink. She told me that Ella would be able to do any activity and never look back, but I'm certainly worried.

I don't know what happened Thursday to make her go lame. I wonder if the way she moves her body when she's feeling her sheep at top speed is hard on her shoulder. There's a lot of one-legged juking and jiving, and I guess it would be the same kind of stress that would come with too much weaving in agility. The weaves were to be the last piece of equipment to add back, and I actually haven't weaved at all with her since her surgery. I don't know if 2x a day on sheep was too much, or maybe she slipped in the mud or got tangled in her line. I don't know if this surgery ever "fails;" it was emphasized to me how well dogs do and that they have no trouble returning to top levels of competition.

Funky weave photo, showing her "slalom" style. A bad motion for shoulders, I could maybe re-train hopping for weaving, not so much for stockwork.

I sure hope that Ella will be able to continue both activities, I'm so worried.