ABDOMINAL HERNIA REPAIR

Riding Snowflake on her 1st day of Therapeutic HorseBack Riding this season! She's been doing this since Fall 05 (& with Snowflake the whole time :)), she's come a long way since she started but still has lots of work to do. For the most part, she LOVES it!

(She was initially referred from ECI - Early Childhood Intervention/ Birth-3 - because of gross motor delays... at the time it was attributed to weak abdominal muscles as she had umbilical hernia repair surgery at 21mo. - at 2, she was still not running, jumping, etc. & at 3 she was only running in an odd way... she could jump off but not up at the time - neither is a problem now... but is still slightly delayed there/ low muscle tone, but more motor planning issues than anything else... She is also seen in the Orthopaedic clinic at Scottish Rite Hospital for some other issues...)

(Therapeutic HorseBack Riding is good for many areas of therapy, not just gross motor - they spend more time taking care of the horse than riding it... brushing, putting her gear on, feeding, etc... lots of sensory and empathy work in there as well. :))

It's been 5 days since her second abdominal hernia operation but she's doing well. She sure is a little trooper...hard to keep her down. She's not supposed be jumping around, but that's like telling a gazelle to quit jumping.