My dog Dutch

As many of you know, Adrian and I train for French Ring a few times per week. We decided to attend to trial in Utah last weekend. Unfortunately my dog "Dutch" was injured the day before the trial and could not compete. It took me a week to figure out exactly how my dog was injured. Now that I feel I know what happened I'd like to share it on this blog in hopes that maybe other dog owners will prevent it from happening when they see signs of it.
First of all, the night before we left I participated in one last training session with Adrian and other club members. My dog was doing a protection exercise when his right front paw pad started bleeding everywhere like he cut it on glass. We all assumed that the dog did step on a sharp object in the grass and cut the pad. Upon closer inspection I noticed that a good portion of two pads was entirely ripped off! This of course was very upsetting and puzzling at the same time. It was not a cut like you would find from a sharp object. I took him home and soak his foot in hydrogen peroxide and crated him.
For the next few days (including trial day) my dog had great difficulty with simple walking. I basically crated him for a week and gave a percautionary dose of antibiotics. Within five days he was much better and upon close inspection of the pads I noticed that the other feet had pieces of dead loose pad falling off. It was at this time that I realized what really had happened.
I don't think the injury happened during the training session. The injury occurred in my backyard when I let him out to pee and stretch for a couple of hours.
A couple of months ago I installed artificial grass in my backyard because my dog has a compulsive desire to pace in big figure eights in the backyard. This behavior destroyed my grass regardless of how much I would nurture it. I finally broke down and spent the money to get this really clean looking bullet-proof grass installed that also doesn't require watering. Well, the grass really is strong. dogs can't dig holes in it, it's easy to clean and it looks pretty good for plastic. The down side to this grass was noticed early on. It gets REALLY hot in the mid-day sun. I mean TOO hot for dogs to walk on! Your probably thinking "put up shade idiot!" of course I put up shade! I covered half of the yard with awesome sunshade material that people use over gardens and also put up a 12 X 12 easy up fo dogs to lounge under to sip Margaritas and take lazy naps.
The one thing that I forgot to factor in was that my dog is NUTS! There is about a hundred square feet of sun-filled plastic grass exposed through out the day. This exposed grass is part of my dogs figure eight race track area. So for a couple of hours my dog ran around the yard refusing to just settle in the shade and got what I percieve to be carpet burns on his paws. He actually had blood blisters that popped during the training session where I though the accident first occurred. My dogs feet are much better now just one week later.
I own a Belgian Malinios. He is a HIGH maintenance dog. I love him but he needs a lot of exercise and he must be crated for his own safety at times. I take him out every day for exercise in addition to his strenuous training for French Ring Sport. He is very hard, very driven, capable of great damage and very delicate at the same time. He is a high performance animal.
My message to you this summer is "BE AWARE OF YOUR DOGS FEET" The pavement is hot and they are barefoot out there. I have since purchased a "Pad Toughener" product on the "DOBBS" hunting dog website. There are also booties available for working dogs that go jogging with you, etc.. One company is "MuttLuks". If your just starting to jog with your dog break his pads in slow on the pavement. They will toughen naturally but if you rush it they won't want to go on that jog anymore because it will be associated with pain. That's it for now. Happy training and enjoy your four-legged friends!