Wednesday, Part 2

There's a for sale sign in front of my house! Guess i better get busy getting things in showplace shape on the inside. :-)

Zac and i met the PT this afternoon - Gina Epifano in Raleigh. I quite liked her, she was thorough and her plan is very sensible. The video was a big help since Zac showed almost no injury or reaction on exam, and she was really trying to get it. Gina, like the holistic vet i saw before, feels Zac has a muscle memory thing going on, that he's protecting that leg or got a habit of skipping in certain movements. It's actually really predictable, the video made that obvious last night when i was editing it up. If he's moving on a counter-clockwise arc, he'll skip just before he takes the last step or two to turn and arc back the other way, and it's worst when he's going downhill. So, the plan is to do a bit of stretching and a couple of exercises -- a large trotting figure 8 on flat ground and an uphill S-shaped trot. Since Zac will heel to the ATV, it should be pretty easy to do and we'll start tomorrow. Hopefully those exercises will get him used to using his leg in that motion and change his habit, and we can work up to the motion and speed that brings out the skip in a few weeks. We'll do these exercises for a week and then i'll consult with Gina again by email for the next step in the plan. She said since she wasn't getting any reaction out of him, there wasn't really any point to re-examining him to check for improvement. I think it's really great that she'll do it by email. I don't need to put him on strict rest and he can do light work, just needs to not do anything too wild. That's not hard, i've been hovering over him to keep him from acting like a crazy dog for almost a year now. So, all in all, very good news. I want to get that skip under control so he doesn't injure himself compensating, but at least he's not actually *hurt* at this point.