Stick a Needle In It

I am not a hippy dippy woo woo person. You start talking about vibes and energy and my eyes have crossed if I'm even still in the room. 

I R BITE THE THING

But the vet said acupuncture might really help C and since dumping bushels of money down a rabbit hole is basically the description of me owning a horse as an adult, I figured what the hell.

Full disclosure: many years ago I rode a horse that someone paid for acupuncture on. The horse fell asleep with the needles in, but I noticed zero change in performance. That is my entire history with acupuncture.

that purple padding tho

This is the same vet who did Courage's chiropractic appointment a couple weeks ago. She rechecked him and said that his previous pain hotspots already felt much better and that he just looked better generally since his shoeing changes and injections. Then she asked what I expected out of an acupuncture appointment.

I managed to leave "hippy dippy woo woo" out of my response and said I wanted to try and change muscle memory of pain and help Courage realize he felt better. She came back with two things that were very interesting.

1) Horses in general are very honest about what hurts and doesn't, which is why we can do nerve blocks on them. They don't just sit around thinking about pain.

2) She doesn't really buy in to the "energy" stuff around acupuncture. She said that more and more, they are finding out that the meridians through the body actually follow fascia lines and very little is understood about them. In her mind, the acupuncture is more about stimulating the fascia and the resulting electrical response, which is why it helps the horse.

needles!

Then it was time to stick needles in him! She used points that were correlated with his various pain issues--a couple in his neck, his coronet band, lots in his SI area, and some down through his stifle. She also stuck one in his head. I thought probably there should be a couple more there, but I was trying to pay attention and be non-distracting instead of turning it to the SB show.

When I say "stuck needles in", I do mean she carefully felt for correct points and had a very deliberate process and everything was symmetrical--one in this side means a matching one in that side.

IS LAPTOP COOKEE

Then she let him "cook" for a while while she made notes on what she'd done in his file for future reference.

pokey needles

Courage stood quietly for part of it, then got restless and started moving around, so she carefully pulled the needles out. Per her instructions, he gets the next day off, then back to work. She warned me he might be fine and he might feel REALLY GOOD, so be alert, haha.

The vet mentioned she gave me a slight discount (for reasons?), so I paid the same as a regular chiropractic adjustment, which wasn't horrible.

so wet

And that was kind of that. It wasn't all magical and woo woo and I don't really know what I think of it. I'm excited to see how he comes back in to work and if I notice any changes.