Last night while helping some venturer scouts set up camp in my capacity as their unit leader, it occurred to me that tensioning guy ropes for tents was a bit like tweaking the biomechanics of a quadruped with acupuncture, more specifically a balancing technique made popular by the late Dr Richard Tan. He refers to this as using scaffolds to balance the body.

If guy ropes were taut, the tent fabric is stretched tight. Using this analogy, if muscles, tendons and ligaments of all four limbs were tight, it can put extra stress on the dog’s back. If one leg was injured and could not bear full weight, it would tip the balance over to the other legs just like a loose guy rope makes the tent lean the other way. Balance acupuncture uses the ‘good Qi in the meridians of the good legs to restore balance just like loosening the other guy ropes allows the tent to straighten up. Obviously healing still needs to happen but this techniques gives it some breathing space. The tent is now a bit floppy if we slacken all the toggles of the guy ropes and may eventually fall over if it got too windy but analogies will only take you so far so make sure your tent is not a real cheapy where the zip comes apart first go like one of them did last night. Anyway my trusty bike tool kit fixed that but that is another, non vet story.