Life with performance animals can be such a roller coaster ride of tearful disappointment and loss and in the next moment, exhilarating joy. In my last post, I wrote about Kani possibly having to retire. That’s now been decided. A urine culture told us that Kani is carrying FOUR pathogens, two of which are highly resistent to antibiotics. She is now on heavy duty antibiotics for three weeks and then we do another culture. I suspect we’re on a long road of recovery and/or simply keeping the bacteria at bay, and at this point asking her to perform competitively would be too much for her.
The only one suffering anguish about this decision is me. Kani still sleeps on the pillow next to mine at night, still does a few obedience exercises in the backyard most days, and gets her daily dose of cookies and pets. Dogs are gifted with a wonderful ability to accept the Now and be fully present in it. I’m grateful for that.
Meanwhile the roller coaster took me on another exhilarating journey this last weekend. Kani’s son, Reardon, performed in his second novice trial and won High in Trial with a score of 199 out of 200 points! While it was a small trial, there were several highly competitive OTCH dogs there, and the judge had a tough pencil. I was thrilled with the score, but I was even more thrilled that Reardon was so committed to doing his part. It’s hard to articulate, but he really seemed to get that his 5 minutes in the novice ring were all about him, and that he was participating in a performance. And perform he did!
A postscript a week later: Reardon completed his Novice title with another 1st place in his class. This last leg was completed at a challenging venue for a green novice dog, so I’m very proud of how hard Reardon worked at this trial, despite some nervousness on his part. Now we’ll go back to training and cleaning up some things that have gotten sloppy in these last two weeks of trialing. There are specialities for springer spaniels coming up in July and August, and we’ll certainly be competing in them. I’m very excited about Reardon’s debut!
The Spaniel Annals 
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