Yeah! The physical therapist said we can stop using scrunchies. Quite frankly, they didn't have any effect on her anyway. It didn't matter if she was wearing scrunchies, bells, whatever, she was not going to pick her feet up any higher. Katie did another 20 minutes on the water treadmill. We also spent a great deal of time working on the "twist". I reminded Jonna that she probably sprained or tore her groin and/or inner thigh. After much observation, she feels that the "twist" stems from her neurological problems and not an injury to her muscle. With that, we played around with tying the left leg to a front leg and to the other back let with an elastic tie. It was awkward and didn't alleviate the "twist". We also taped a plastic cap to the bottom of her good foot to see if she'd put more weight on the left foot and it didn't really create the change we wanted either. Oh, well. We'll just have to keep working. We are allowed to hike now. I think walking through the woods with all the fallen branches and leaves will encourage her to pick up her feet. We also can stop doing cavelettis on days that she gets to hike. So I am very happy about that too.Yesterday, we went to Chattanooga for Travis' last agility practice on mats. He did very well and ran clean. However, he has bloody nail beds on his outside toes on the front feet. One looks especially bad. I think it is from the pressure he puts on the nail beds when his nails make contact with the mats. They are not as forgiving as natural footing. I have been working to shorten his nails as much as possible. I try to dremel or file them back a little every other day or so. I worked on them again this morning and ended up filing all the way down to the quick and getting a tiny drop of blood on the nail with the especially bad nail bed. I hope it will stimulate the quick to pull back and that it all heals quickly. He is not lame, but I would obviously like for him to be problem free at the invitational.
Also in Chattanooga, this is where Katie had her accident. It was nice for the folks who helped us that night to see her feeling much better. Melodi had helped me carry her through the parking lot and put her in the van. She had seen Katie at her absolute worst and had heard her painful screams. She helped me decide what to do and rallied the others to gather up my things, fold up my crate, and bring Travis out to the van. So I was especially excited to show Katie off to Melodi who was relieved to see how well she was doing. Everyone else was happy to see her doing so well also.
