From There To Here: On The Road To Recovery

    Some of life's best lessons are delivered in painful ways. The trick is not getting so hurt you bear emotional or physical scars that prevent you from taking those lessons and moving forward to a better place. Diva getting stepped on by the cow was an emotional lesson for me and one that stemmed largely around guilt. I felt ultimately responsible. She may have come in hot and to close but she wouldn't have been in that arena if I hadn't chose to be. I have to wonder if working stock is like falling off a horse? If you don't get right back on does fear and self doubt set in? I have never been one to let something stand in my way, and I don't plan to make an exception this time, but I do wonder what it will be like taking that lead off and stepping into the arena with cattle again.

   In the past 3 weeks I have done everything I can to get Diva back on track physically. Thanks to Scott's fast action we were able to start ice therapy on her back within minutes and continued to do that for the first 48 hours. I also started giving her relatively high doses of Traumeel immediately after and continued that for the better part of two weeks. Traumeel has a lot of Arnica which does wonders for bruising. Once we got back home I started doing heat therapy 4 times a day for 15 minutes at a time. Diva let me know how much she enjoyed heat therapy by stretching out and falling asleep with a content look on her face at each session :-). Just 6 day after the incident Diva went in to see Dr. Z and start acupuncture and cold laser therapy. Dr. Z mentioned she had a spleen meridian deficiency which is the area that controls inflammation and bruising and that she was very reactive to palpation of her right hind quadriceps. Surprisingly she was not all that out of alignment skeletally. To say that Diva was unimpressed with acupuncture would be an understatement, lol! Most of the needles went in fine but over her kidney area it was very sore and she got squirrely. Once they were in she settled down but never really relaxed. I noticed an immediate improvement following the acupuncture though, especially in her back!

   The first test came just a couple of couple of days later when Diva went to stay at Kelly's while I was out of town for a wedding. 6 Aussies in the house is a recipe for play and running. Kelly did a great job of limiting Diva and saving her from herself ;-). She had one time where Kelly mentioned she looked a little sore upon getting up after laying down but that was it and it didn't last more than a couple of steps. We went back in this past Thursday to see Dr. Z again and I was ecstatic to hear that all her reactivity in the quadriceps was gone, her groin and cruciate felt great, and the area in her back was down to a very small localized area. Dr. Z did acupuncture again but because she was so much improved we decided to fore go the cold laser treatment. This time Diva was much more relaxed about the needles and she even snoozed while they were in! She was still showing a spleen deficiency so the Dr. and I decided to schedule one more session for the following week. The best part though was that Diva has been given the OK to start straight line jumping again and to get back into stock work (conservatively at first ;-))!

    Yesterday I set up the jumps at home and did a small set of 4 reps through an easy grid with the jumps at elbow height. Diva was so excited and clearly ready to go. We also played a little tug with her new Angry Birds toy and I tossed the Frisbee for her to "catch". So no one freaks out, I had her sitting a few feet in front of me and I tossed it at mouth level ;-). On Monday we are headed out to work stock. I have every intention on putting her on cows in the small pens to work on some things that are more mental than physical but we will end our day with ducks so I can watch her shine!

Heat therapy is very relaxing