Confliction. Complete Confliction.

I’m itching to get out, yet I see the positives of where I am. I feel like my dream has been snagged away from me, but I feel like my dream is still in my grasp. Do I go with the flow with the opportunities in my face, or do I take control and point the flow in another direction?

I’m not in a comfortable place, nor have I been for quite some time. I’m ready for the next step in my career but I’m not quite sure what that will be. I have hope that I have grabbed onto an opportunity that will turn into a real move, but I’m worried it’ll slip away. Life outside of work is uncomfortably circular. Stuck in a troubling cycle.

Epic and I have been fighting an injury for quite some time now. He had a bad collision with a jump upright (chasing a toy) and he injured his supraspinatus tendon and locked up his neck really bad. Tendon/ligament injuries are the most frustrating injuries of them all. I would know. The soft tissue in my right ankle has been a disaster since 9^th grade. I’ve struggled with repeated ankle sprains since I broke my leg in 8^th grade. I’ve been through 2 ankle reconstructions, but I have faith I’ve finally had my last one because my ankle no longer relies on my personal ligaments anymore ;). But it’s not like I was “on the bench” because of my ankle. I got really good at taping and taking anti-inflammatories. I could run through the pain. The pain wasn’t the main reason why I had the surgeries. It was because of the instability; because the day-to-day pain was nowhere near the actual pain of the actual sprain. I constantly felt the huge possibility of spraining my ankle every day walking on a sidewalk, taking a step down, or just standing still. It was ridiculous. Ankle sprain pain makes me want to throw up right now just thinking about it. But the fear of the sprain was not the only issue. I started having knee and hip pain because of the way I stood on my foot.

My point is that I could explain all of this to my doctors, verbally. I could make sense of the pain I was or was not feeling. I could start activity and stop when I felt I was going too far. Dogs can’t explain this to us except for physical signs. It’s beyond words to explain how hard it is to read them and make the decision to make the next step in rehab. How can you tell agitation from weakness once enough time has passed for overcompensation to take over? Are they feeling pain related to the injury or are they sore from exercises? Lots of guessing. Educated instinctual guessing.

We’re on, what feels like, a never-ending rollercoaster.   He came up just slightly lame following a few days after the collision with the jump. Then, the lameness would disappear the next day. I’d give him a couple days off, then work him- he came up lame. Then give him a week off, add activity slowly- lame again. But never horribly lame. Just ever so slightly. Slight lameness has turned into avoidance of standing full weight on the leg and stiffness. In a way, it could appear things were getting better because the initial lameness is gone, but the reality is, things are not getting better, but actually getting worse. We’ve crossed the line of increasing the difference in muscle mass between right and left shoulders- A bad sign. We’d go through weeks off, get the ok from the PT/Chiro that it’s ok to continue progressing on the rehab. Then Epic would be a normal young border collie with a bit more freedom and find opportunity to take off running full speed, or break through a window (real story), or something along those lines. These episodes would place us right back to where we started- an agitated tendon and a locked up neck and upper back. Totally and completely frustrating. I mean who wouldn’t be frustrated? Watching your dog in pain over and over, unable to break the cycle. Unable to explain that calmness is good because we want them to take the necessary time to heal. Conflicted between house rest and crate rest. They both have their pluses and minuses.

So we are at a crossroad. We can keep doing what we are doing (rest, light activity to avoid complete atrophy, chiropractic, acupuncture and appropriate anti-inflammatory measures), but this is not working so well, or we can start looking into more invasive measures.

We’ve decided to go through with a PRP (Platelet Rich Plasma) injection to the tendon. It’s a relatively new procedure, but there have been some strong success stories. It makes sense though- tendons and ligaments have very very little blood flow directly to them. Hence why if you sprain your ankle, the recovery is so painfully long in comparison to if you broke a bone. The idea of a PRP injection is to actually deliver the growth factors necessary in healing directly into the tendon or ligament and bypass the hope these growths factors would diffuse into the injured tissue.

Here’s the fear- keeping Epic quiet enough to let the healing take place (taking into assumption this healing would take place if everything went exactly to plan). We haven’t had a great track record. Epic dislikes spending time in a crate more than anyone. He’s such a “together” dog, but put him in a crate in the house and leave, he goes cray. This is contrary to a crate in the car where he will lay silently all day. So, because of this, he has been left loose in the house. I’m afraid of injury if I shove him in a crate. Ironic.

New plans after this procedure. X-pens, a mom willing to take Epic during the day and such.

With a new plan on how to keep Epic quiet. I have decided to go through with the injection. We need to break this cycle. I’m terrified, yet confident with this decision. I trust the surgeon completely. I trust Epic’s team when they say they believe this is the right step.

So here we go…Bombs away…Geronimo…No looking back…And so on…

I’m not ready to write off Epic’s career in agility to a silly little tendon. We’re going to come at this injury and defeat it. It’ll only make us stronger. Speed bumps only keep things in perspective. We might be at a fork and deciding to take the road less traveled, but I have faith we are choosing wisely.