Vet Magic

Ernie got chiropracted yesterday, FINALLY. He's been weaned off the Bute today; both him and Stella stayed in yesterday for Ernie's corrections to do what I call "marinate". Most vets will tell you not to ride or work the horse for the first day or so after they've been adjusted, and many will say leave them in on stall rest so they don't go out, realize how wonderful they feel, and pop a joint again. I'm not for the stall rest, but I also didn't want to turn either out given how, um, terribly F'ed up my horse turned out to be.

Ernie has a love-hate relationship with chiropractic work. He LOVES how he feels afterwards; you can tell you did something major because as soon as you do, his eyes go soft and he starts licking and chewing. However, he anticipates the jerking and pain sometimes and can be a real bear, hence the "hate" part.

Dr. Barry, the vet I use at school, is WUUUUNDERFUL. He's an older guy, very experience, and is very much into alternative-type medicines, acupuncture, massage, herbal stuff, that sort of thing. He uses a sort of "Body Talk" method during chiropractic work. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I was very skeptical when he first did it on Ernie. He has the owner (or someone present, if the owner isn't there) stand with one hand on the horse and the other outstretched. He places one of his hands on your arm, the other on the horse at various points to check for imbalances. I think the idea is you are channeling the horse's energy through you at each point (meridians, I think they're called?). At each point, he'll say "push up", and you push up quickly with your outstretched arm. The response he gets is a gauge for that point.

Now, this sounds probably kinda silly, for some of you. However, he has NEVER been wrong. I work with him every time as the channel-er, and even I can feel when a response is weak. Sometimes my arm will waver before he even asks, and we know that point is VERY weak.

I explained to him yesterday afternoon what had been going on with Ernie: that I was sure he'd thrown his right hip almost a month ago, and that because nothing had been done about it quickly, he'd been guarding it and thus messing up everything else, radiating up his body. I also mentioned he'd started to get head twitches on Friday of last week, which led me to believe he was out at the poll or the first couple cervical vertebrae as well.

Says Dr. Barry, "Well, let's have a look!" He loves Ernie. He's so fascinated every time he comes to work on him, it's almost humorous. When I called to make an appointment last week, he said "Of course! Ernie's indestructible! We'll fix him up, no problem." So, we got to work. Sure enough, we discovered BOTH hips were out, the right being the worse of the two. His sacrum was OK, surprisingly, but he had some stifle soreness do to weak muscling, and his semitendinosus and semimembranosus muscles (one runs around the anus/dock, the other is the big muscle running from the hip down to the hock) were VERY tight. You could feel the fibers if you massaged them with your fingers.

He also had some issues with L3 and L4, two of the lumbar vertebrae in his back. We found he was very, very weak in his abdominal obliques (the muscles the lift the belly and aid in lifting the back) which caused the sore back problems. Moving on, he had popped out C4, the 4th cervical vertebrae in his neck, and, just like I'd thought, had some problems up by his poll. Everything got corrected; he wasn't thrilled about having his neck cracked, but was MOST appreciative about almost everything else, especially the hips.

I didn't get on him today, mostly because we're into preseason and my ass got kicked good today. We go 2-3 times a day for a week until classes start, and then just once. The first session this morning was all spring work, and I about threw up, something that's not yet occurred in the 12+ years I've played soccer. I was just too tired and too stiff, the latter of which is Bad News Bears when I ride Ernie. You can tell he wants and needs to go back to work though...

Coming soon, I'm going to put up Ernie's new and improved rehab schedule. I've decided it's a bad idea to try and do much anymore anyway, but he needs a job and he needs one now. In the meantime, I'm going to bed. I'm tired and stiff and sore and lacking sleep and real, proper food...