Emma was very happy to see her Aunt Lana this weekend. The plan was to take a few minutes to fix up her front feet (I was not entirely happy with how they looked) and then to ride. Of course, as Dad always says, “You have to have a plan so you know what you’re changin’.” As it turned out, I said, “Oh, by the way, Emma has this lump on her back that’s come up pretty recently” and we morphed into massage mode. The bump, by the way, was located in the middle of her back between tops of the spinous process, under where the back of the saddle would sit. We pulled up the mounting block (Lana is short, Emma is tall), and Lana began finding spasm in her back. On the left side in front of the hip, on the right over the top of the hip and behind it some. I suppose I should find the technical name for those muscles… Regardless, while Emma was pretty stoic in her reactions to the MM, she was all about that massage. At one point, something pretty big went “pop” and she tucked her nose in and tried to stretch the top of her head through the ceiling. Never moved a foot though. So we never got to the ride. Smeared comfrey all over her back and was given intsructions to work on those spots again in 3 days. The comfrey helps in at least 2 ways: one, help with pain relief; two, provides a marker for where I am supposed to massage on Wednesday – as I said, not so good at finding those spasms without help.
p.s. A note to remind myself to take a deeper look at the web site http://www.scienceofmotion.com/ . I ran across this while double checking my spelling for “spinous process” – but it’s late, and I’m not reading more tonight…
p.p.s. Also began authoring a web site for Lana Mayer. Partially so I can link to it, but also because I think she has acquired a great deal of knowledge over her lifetime and can help more than a few people with their horses.