Beginning Bowen!

This weekend I had the great opportunity to do a post-graduate course in Bowen Therapy, which was absolutely fabulous!
What is Bowen? Bowen is a soft tissue manipulation therapy that involves adjusting the myofacial tissue planes which causes greater hydration and flexibility of the tissue. Fascia is the connective tissue that surrounds all the muscles and muscle fibers, nerves, organs, really everything in the body. Bowen is used for musculoskeletal issues as well as deeper problems and incorporates a whole-body approach (e.g if you have a sore neck you might have a problem with your ileo-caecal valve). It is a very gentle but suprisingly effective technique and I throughouly enjoyed the course and am alrady practicing on my own dogs.
Terra was the Bowen Queen for the weekend, taking everything we had to offer and proving how good she felt by running really well on saturday night (pity about the handler, maybe I should have had some Bowen!) The interesting one of the weekend though, was Secret. Secret was her normal hyperactive, difficult self throughout the course (which was held at my house), and we didnt really use her on Friday or Saturday. By Sunday, we needed more dogs to practice on so she was hoiked onto the table. The other people doing the course (one other lady who had already done her Equine qualification) and the instructor knew what type of dog she was by now, as she had jumped all over them and barked most of the weekend. We decided to do some lymphatic work on her, particularly concentrating on the TMJ (temporomandibular junction) and all her facial muscles. To my HUGE suprise she fell asleep on the table!! Thats pretty big for a nervous hyperactive dog like her..I will continue to experiement with her and see what effect it has. I am also going to try some other alternative therapies with her to try and balance her a little more, I think it must be quite exhusting to be 'on' all the time.
I gave Mike a brief treatment last night as well, to try and find out what it feels like and he certainly appeared to feel an effect, had a great nights sleep and feels great this morning! So, sounds promising and I'm looking forward to hopefully experiencing some of the 'magical' results that Bowen therapists seem to enjoy.

Princess of the Jungle..

Die lemon DIE!!!

Runs from the weekend

Check out Terra after she saw me run Secret..! Turbo charged! Jealousy.. ?

Shimmer and the shoe

Shimmer is settling in well, she really is a lovely, confident, outgoing puppy! She got over her brief fear of other dogs and now trots out, tail up, to every dog we meet, including a HUGE maremma we saw in the park! She also, unsurprisingly, loves to chew..











Wonderful pictures courtesy of Mike, of course..he is avaliable for location photos shoots this summer, portrait with our without people and studio shoots when we get it built!

Secret's 1st Trial

As promised, here are Secret's runs..and Terra's 'I need some training after 8 weeks off' runs as well..

Introducing Mac's All That Glitters 'Shimmer' !

The weekend saw a new addition to our family, kindly brought to Perth by her breeder, Sam. LOTS of arguments and tried names later saw us decide on 'Shimmer'.
She's a lovely litte girl, confident and already very opinionated!
Shimmer likes : toys, eating bark, KIDS, sausage and ice cream!
Shimmer doesnt like: being left alone in her pen and other dogs.
We are having fun with our little girl but BOY are puppies a lot of work..you forget just how much! Here are some pics of the new member of the family

World Dog Games, Bowen Therapy and Exciting News!

We got back from the WDG late Monday night. Overall, it was an interesting experience. Certainly a lot different to anything I have experienced with agility before! We ran in ACER arena, in front of 5,000 people each day. The dogs were running on basically long astro turf,with a strip of flyball anti-fatigue matting thrown in for good measure. All the dogs were quite tentative initially, Terra included, in fact she really slowed right down which made me worry..
Thursday and Friday were check in and dress rehearsal. We got to watch the other dogs taking part, and as I have never seen either Disc Dogs or dock diving (except on TV) that was quite interesting. I could definitely never do Disc, that requires way too much accuracy in throwing! The Dock Diving looked fun though, I think Jess would enjoy that as she already loves leaping into the pool from the side. And BOY can those flyball dogs run! And BOY are they noisy! Anyone who complains at the noise at an agility trial should try going to flyball..picture teams of dogs barking at the top of their voices, handlers yelling to get the dogs to return fast and the competing dog SCREAMING down a line of jumps, grabbing the ball and SCREAMING back, only to be passed by another ridiculously fast dog so intent on getting that ball they run at top speed right past each other. Fantastic!

Saturday and Sunday were performance days, and unfortunately they had decided to cut us down from 2 runs a day to one..we went all the way to Sydney for ONE MINUTE of agility! Anyway, on Saturday Terra was a little overwhelmed by everything, the people, having to run inside on astro turf and having TV cameras in her face all the time. She ran quite hesitantly but went round clear, going into 1st place.
By Sunday she had well and truly worked out what we were there for and ran at her normal super fast speed, unfortunately we had a slight miscommunication at the 3rd last jump and she brought the bar down, and that along with a judging call left her narrowly in 2nd place (the $10,000 bar!)

I was very pleased with how she handled the whole event, the WA dogs (Terra and Jasper) were the youngest there by far (all the rest being 8+) and they both coped like real troopers. I am also very glad we don't live in Syndey! Homebush was lovely, super facilities, but the rest of Sydney is so busy and everything from parking to getting places to walking the dog, was such a hassle! Overall, as I said, an interesting experience.

At the end of November Lea Smart is coming over from QLD to teach me how to do Bowen therapy. This is a intensive course that will qualify me to perform Bowen therapy on my own and clients animals. I'm really looking forward to it, its an area I would like to move into as I think the musculoskeletal health of our canine atheletes is paramount, and an area that we probably don't pay enough attention to in Australia. After I become proficient at it I will be offering Bowen therapy both at home and at trials to performance dogs, and pets with specific problems (arthritis, hip dysplasia and so on). I have heard lots of good things about Bowen Therapy and am looking forward to learning about it first hand!

And finally..some very exciting news..we are getting a puppy! Puppy arrives this weekend, she is the 'Squiggle' of Sam Weaver's latest litter. Go to: nabudiboys.blogspot.com to see lots of great photos! She is out of Tess by Tom, and hopefully the combination of Tess's athleticism and high drive with Tom's lovely structure and biddibility (from his Daddy Fred) should make for a lovely agility dog! Pup (still nameless, suggestions??) is very closely related to Jule's Mac's DiscoDiva and Graeme's Mac's Maverick, both great agility dogs so if she is anything like them I will be very happy! Photos very soon and yes she will be coming to the trial on saturday night to meet everyone!