Hydrotherapy session last night Unbelievable

Thursday 13th Sept 2007

WOW!

I am just stunned and speechless.......

Took Bracken for her weekly Hydro session last night. Bracken's leg was still stuck at a 90 degree angle due to the ligament contraction, well, after last nights session, all that has changed, Take a look.

Below, Bracken's contracted right leg. This was her leg more or less fully stretched.
















Now Look, for some reason the ligaments seemed to give last night. A Lot of it down to all the stretching and exercises, but, most of it due to the physiotherapy work Tom does in the warm water of the hydrotherapy pool.















And then.........















And a small video.......




Sorry about how short the video is, She was on her way out the pool and I had to run to the car for my mobile phone. I was present all through the session and I had no idea what Tom was about to show me. All he said was, "Now Craig, prepare yourself"........"Wait until you see this". He started to raise the hoist and I could see the difference right away, her leg was hanging a lot lower. It wasn't until he started to move her leg back and forth that I realised how much movement was back. There were 4 of us in the room including Tom, the other 2 are assistants and have helped with Bracken since Feb, I can't begin to type what they said when the saw the movement, I would be at risk of blogger deleting my blog.

I'm just stunned, not one to knock my vet, but, he had me believing we couldn't fix the contraction. Bracken is back on the protein powder every morning, we are going to give it our all now. Tom is off to Australia for 3 weeks so we have no Hydro until he is back. I hope when he does get back we have a surprise for him.

Good news all round with Bernie's leg and now Bracken's, our luck has changed and I'm off to get a lottery ticket!

Onwards and Upwards.

;-)

An Update At Last!

Wednesday 12th Sept 2007

Sorry,
I should have been on here before now to update you all on our progress, but..... just what is it with my family and legs?
Mummy has a horse called Bernie and he had an accident about 3 weeks ago, he caught his leg on a piece of tin from on of the lean 2 sheds and cut it very badly.
The cut was through the Coronal band, and for any of you who know about horses, this is not a good place to cut. The Coronal band is basically what attaches a horses hoof to the leg and Bernie had almost cut 40% of the way through. Anyway, the vet came and did all he could but didn't give out much hope.

?????? now where have I heard that before?

As usual there was a lot of talk about putting to sleep etc, but mum and dad being mum and dad said no way, we have to try and fix this. So, lots of bute and new bandages every other day, oh and some help of the good old "Echinacea" and Bernie is well on the mend, his cut is healing very quickly and the vet is over the moon.

Now for me,
I am still going to the hydrotherapy every week, in fact I am off there tonight.
Tom is really giving it all he can to get my ligaments stretched out, every week we go dad can see my leg getting lower when the raise me out of the pool. Dad and Mum still have stretching exercises with me every day. Dad is now thinking about putting my old boot back on me. He has talked it through with Tom and we have all came to the conclusion that it may be a good idea to put some weight on the boot. This way my leg and ligaments will be under tension if you like, we think it may help in stretching out the ligaments. Dad thinks that because he took the boot off when I started to lift my leg and not drag it, this may be the reason the ligaments contracted and if he had left it on it would have help keep the leg straight, you can see how it used to be in the earlier video's dad took in the field.

Anyway, all is still well, I still love to go for long walks and have a good old rummage! I'm not in pain, and oh......I still haven't caught my leg on anything, touch wood!

Dad is going to take some new pictures and video's when were out an about, he will get them posted on soon.