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Rehabbing an Injury

After last week got away from me talking about the neural factors in strength performance, I hope to keep it a little bit more brief today.  And what I want to talk about is how I specifically worked to rehab an injury in one of my few trainees.

The Injury

The long and the short of it is that during a workout, they got all twisted up during a ball game and their limp on the left side indicated that something was injured.   A quick trip to the doctor along with some X-rays determined that, thankfully, it wasn’t an ACL tear.  Rather, the hip joint was injured and no surgery was indicated.

It didn’t appear to be too severe but I was told to bring them back if it wasn’t improving after a number of weeks.  Painkillers were provided to be used as necessary and the trainee used them fairly continuously for the first two weeks simply to facilitate overall daily activity without pain.… Keep Reading

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Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 10

Ok, time to finish up.  In Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 9, I talked more specifically about what I was doing (or not) during the craziness of last year, primarily focusing on the role NORMAN was playing at home (short version: driving me crazy) as well as being selected to move up to Yellow level.    Which was good in that it gave me the tools to work with NORMAN (and ALFIE) at home.  And bad in that I now had a lot of yellow dogs at the shelter to contend with too (and this was during the time of 2011 when we had a LOT of yellow level dogs).

I would note that I often joked with other volunteers that I often came to the shelter to get a break from my two crazy dogs at home.  Because although there were lots of them and a lot of yellow dogs specifically at the shelter, there was the advantage that, after I worked with them, I could put them back. … Keep Reading

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Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 9

So having talked fairly generally about what was going on at the Austin Humane Shelter during 2012 (with some comments about my involvement) in Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8, I want to switch gears into self-indulgent prattling mode and talk about how it was (or wasn’t) affecting me personally. Some of this will detail my time at the shelter, some of it will tie in with stuff about my own dogs ALFIE and NORMAN, who I have written about in their own article series.

Don’t be surprised if this is a little bit all over the map as I’m jumping back and forth across topics. I wasn’t able to find any good flow for this part of the story.  Also my system ate what I had initially written so I had to start from scratch (because computers are evil).

Back to Me

As I mentioned in Part 6, I had moved up to full blue BRATT in 2011 and never lacked for anything to do.… Keep Reading

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Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 8

So in Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 6 and Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter Part: 7, I described the insanity that made up merely the first half (or so) of 2011 there.  That included the Bastrop Hoarding Experience along with a very special dog that had to be put down, along with the loss of our air conditioning in the middle of a brutal Austin summer. And while those three events might have been enough to deal with, it was only the beginning. We still had four months left in the year and things weren’t over yet.  Today I’ll finish describing the rest of the year.

September: Bastrop Burns

Yup, Bastrop again. Because between the drought and the heat and everything else, Austin can become a tinderbox and shit sometimes burst into flames. And there was a really horrible fire out in Bastrop. Like weeks of land burning and people losing their houses kinds of fires.… Keep Reading

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Volunteering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 7

So last time in Volunteeering at the Austin Humane Shelter: Part 6, I talked about my move up to blue BRATT and the start of the year’s craziness which was that Bastrop Hoarding Event. And while that one event would have been enough to exhaust anyone, it was just the start of the absolute craziness that was 2011. We continue with the next big shelter drama, a rare occurrence but one that caused a lot of problems.

Early August: A Dog Gets Put Down

I mentioned in the original series that the Austin Humane Shelter is a no-kill shelter. That is, the shelter doesn’t put down dogs as a matter of course. In reality this means that dog euthanasia is kept to 10% or less; it’s also only done on a dog by dog basis. It’s never done for time (i.e. if a dog is at the shelter for too long) and it’s never done based on breed.… Keep Reading