Regular followers of our blog will have met Sampson before. An accomplished dog agility competitor, Sampson was well on his way to the top when he injured his back badly in an unfortunate accident. In serious pain (and not terribly happy to let those nasty vet people touch him!), everything suddenly looked bleak. His owner Penny arrived at ARC very anxious about his day to day life, let alone his agility career.
It’s been quite a long road to recovery for Sampson, and we can’t emphasise enough that while we at ARC have played our part in diagnosing, analysing and directing operations, it’s Sampson and Penny that have done the true hard work. Every day they have worked together under our guidance carrying out Sampson’s physiotherapy exercises, come rain or shine. color palette With tremendous patience he has built tremendous core strength and re-learned to control his muscles and balance and build his speed and power back up one step at a time.
Sampson’s first tentative steps back into the ring a couple of months ago were nerve wracking for Penny (although apparently less so for Sampson, who left his competition standing in lower- ranked any-size and anything-but-collie agility competitions!) A return to high level competition had seemed an unreachable dream, and we would have been happy with simple runs for fun and mental stimulation. However, Sampson and Penny are an amazing team, and the tireless hours they put in have taken them far past that level. Two weeks ago, Sampson took the final win he needed to be promoted to Grade 7, the highest level in dog agility and keenly sought after. A week later, he topped that off with an overall win in the semi-finals, which qualifies him for this year’s Kennel Club Agility final at Olympia in December with just a handful of Britain’s elite canine competitors! Watch out for him on TV on December 18th and join us in cheering him on.
Sampson and Penny, we’re so proud of you, and we hope you inspire our canine (and human) friends not to give up when injury strikes.
