About this time last year, Jaxon decided that he really wasn’t interested in Agility anymore. I couldn’t understand why a puppy who had loved going to training & playing on the equipment now had no interest whatsoever. At every occasion, he decided running away would be a better option. I felt pretty sad for him, and guilty that I was trying to get him to do things he didn’t want to do. Then it receded to a point where he wouldn’t jump at all, and then I clicked something was wrong.

At first I worried it was a tick, but a thorough check-over & watch-out for other symptoms turned up no nasty ticks. So off to the vet we went, and she immediately found he was sore in his back spinal area. We were referred to the Animal Referral Hospital in Sydney, and introduced to Helen Nicholson – a very talented animal (and human) physio.

It turned out that Jaxon had no core muscles whatsoever, so every time he did agility, it was hurting him. In particular weaves, a-frame and jumping. Poor baby. So we put an immediate recuperation plan in place & Jaxon & I worked together to start building up his core muscles through stretching, balancing, special stretch and movement exercises that targeted building up his core muscles.

Today I’m pleased to say, I have a strong little pap who loves agility. We have a core session every couple of days, just to ensure we keep up with that strength. In addition I added stretching, warm-up and warm-down as part of a normal Agility session or trial.

In the year since then, we’ve had a cracking time. In ANKC we’ve gained our AD (Agility Dog), GD (Gamblers Dog), and SPD (Strategic Pairs Dog) titles (to add to our Jumping Dog). We started trialling with ADAA (Agility Dog Association of Australia) and have gained our BAAD (Beginner Agility Australia Dog) title!

Most of all – we have had a brilliant and fun time training and trialling. Here’s to more yet to come thanks to our core strengthening work!