Aster is so lame she hasn't been out today. It's her offside hind again which is always the one to plague her if she is going to have trouble. She is hopping around, happy as larry, wanting to play and I'm just like go rest!! We did some indication training where she can just look at the cup lying down but that's about it! Poor whipper. She hates not being active! No doubt she was very upset that I went running with Islay rather than her but it can't be helped.

The new trick we have been doing just for fun. Igor just waits for it to rain treats lol

So I’ve had plantar fasciitis since I did a charity run in February and ran30 miles/walked 20 miles in 2 weeks! Had to quit my challenge and it’s been agony! However, recently it’s much better and we have done some tentative short runs! Today we nailed 4k in 29 minutes (used to 5k in that time but we will get it back) she has remembered all her commands - out (get on road to pass someone) up (get back on path) right/left for corners, go and whoa, obvious…. But we also added in a side command…. She knows that means come in close to my right and I wanted to have it so when we are going past driveways etc and I can’t see she is level with me not ahead of me… she did great, side meant run next to me ‘go’ meant run ahead of me at end of lead. I’d say only issue at mo is when I’m walking for a short bit she’s sniffing too much and I don’t want that on this lead so guess I need to keep running lol!!!! 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️ So so lush to be back to it and no foot pain at all! Yes!!!!!

I combined a trip to go and get a few bales of hay with some training in a different park today. It was ideal conditions- enough dogs visible to work on same field but plenty of distance to open and close. However, Aster really was as limp and lifeless as a limpet. As it was a new place we just walked around the edge on lead for a bit first without asking for anything, just to see what was cooking. I noticed she wouldn't take food and was just.... yeh very shut down really. I tried a lot of different things to see if it would encourage her to engage and open up a bit, and gave the leash pop focus a try seeing as we've been training that a lot recently. We just had 100% pancake on a lead really. At one point I just ran away from her as she was so disengaged sniffy and staring into the distance that I thought maybe she'll come back to life if I literally just buggar off. That didn't really work so I changed tact eventually and went and got her lattice ball toy from the car (after hefting hay bales up as it was under the bloody boot trap door thing🙄). It took some feigned throws of the ball to "find" her in her battered exterior. The first couple chases ended exactly as I predicted, which was a chase and grab then drop it, sniff the floor and stare into the distance. I just played footie with it then for a bit and eventually we got a couple of very nice chase, grab, bring back and jump up at me to tug. So she did come out her shell for a few mins but boy was it hard work! We did get some activation barking too which I'll forever be grateful to Alex Lato for having us train because it's such a powerful tool. It's dawning on me the huge gaps in our training/socialisation programme at the moment. Easy to feel deflated at that but I'm just going to let it kick me up the ass to really strengthen these weak points and see if we can start to shave down the length of time spent "warming up". We finished with watching a cockerpoo thing chasing a ball which she did really well with - she offered lots of eye contact here and took food rewards every time so a good time to end the session.

Thick sheet ice this morning over everything meant going out to muck out and feed was dicey as hell! So we did some leash pop focus and contact heeling / focus switching bits inside this morning. By late afternoon it thawed out enough for a local walk so we incorporated some leash pop focus into that too which was good. I will try and get to the park again tomorrow👌