Miss Dominick is a Otago University graduate and sister of the university's top-performing student skier Phil Dominick.
A month ago, she decided to attend Cardrona Alpine Resort's adaptive games, where she learned about locally based ski programmes for the disabled.
Recently, she returned to Wanaka, where she has been learning to cross country ski with the Nordic ski area founder, Mary Lee, and members of the Canadian Paralympic team at the Snow Farm, while her brother competes at the Uni Snow Games at Cardrona.
The experience had brought pleasure and excitement back into her life at a time when she was taking stock of her new life in a wheelchair.
"If you had said I would be doing this six months ago, I wouldn't have believed you because I was lying in hospital being tube fed, with tubes up my nose and everywhere. It was horrible," Miss Dominick said this week.
"But I think it is really important to do things like this after you have been through such an awful tragedy."
Miss Dominick fell off a bridge in Auckland, landing on a step about 20m below and breaking her spine, depriving her of movement and sensation below the bottom of her rib cage.
She is grateful to friends and others who came to her rescue and recognised she should not be moved until emergency services arrived.
That saved her from further damage from a very fragile and subtle fracture in her neck.
"In a way, I was really, really lucky. But I hate talking about it," she said.
Born in the Bay of Plenty and raised in Auckland since the age of 10, Miss Dominick obtained a Bachelor degree in human nutrition at Otago University.
Her family has strong connections to Otago, where her mother was born and her parents both studied.
The family also has a passion for snow sports and lived near Turoa skifield for several years, where Miss Dominick's father worked as a skifield doctor.
At the end of her first two years at Otago University, Miss Dominick travelled to Lake Tahoe in the United States to qualify and work as a ski instructor.
After completing her teacher training at Massey University's Albany campus, she worked at Ruapehu College, Glenfield Intermediate and, most recently, Albany Junior High School.
After two months in an Auckland spinal unit, Miss Dominick was happy to be self-sufficient again and was relishing the chance to talk with other wheelchair athletes about everything and anything.
However, registering for the adaptive games last month still took some courage.
"I wheeled in and felt reluctant to be part of it. But it took about a day and I was absolutely loving it," she said.
Miss Dominick was pleased she had done a little preparation at Snow Planet in Auckland, an indoor artificial snow centre, to get her confidence in a sit-ski.
By the end of the week, she was skiing all over the mountain.
"There are neat volunteers at Cardrona, who all want to help. I had no idea but they have 50 volunteers who give up their day to ski with you all day, which is quite neat.
"You can't be in a bad mood up there when it is a beautiful day. I am just blown away by the programme."
An alpine skier during her legged days, she wasn't going to try cross-country skiing as well but decided at the last minute to give it a go.
"I had no idea it would interest me. But that's when Mary Lee got talking to me and said I had to come back and meet [Canadian paralympian] Colette Bourgonje. She phoned when Colette arrived and we came back."
Bourgonje (46) has represented her country at Paralympic level in skiing and wheelchair racing since 1992.
The former cross-country runner was injured in a car accident in 1980.
She is a physical education teacher and sponsored athlete, who now focuses on skiing.
Meeting Bourgonje and other adaptive skiers was so inspiring, Miss Dominick is determined to promote skiing to others who have had disabling injuries.
But it is early days yet, and she sweeps aside talk of one day becoming a Paralympian herself.
"Skiing is neat. You just meet people from all over the place. I have been a skier beforehand. But I think the reason why I love doing cross-country skiing is because I used to be a runner and it is something I can do on my own or with a friend.
"It is a nice feeling to be all tired and hungry at the end. And it is hard to find something that feels like good exercise. For people who are that way inclined, it is a way to get back into it.
"And you don't have to be a skier either. It's just about enjoying being outside and getting out and meeting people," Miss Dominick said.
As an active person with qualifications in nutrition, one of Miss Dominick's interests is whether athletes can burn enough calories in a wheelchair, avoid gaining weight and get that pleasant sensation of having gone hard out.
She's answered one of those questions already.
"Going to the gym and swimming are not quite the same. But after doing a big cross-country ski, it is nice to feel really exhausted," she said, grinning.
Next, she wants to get a cycle chair.
And when she gets back to Auckland, she will begin assessing her career.
Continuing her studies in dietetics is one option, focusing on the links between spinal cord injuries and nutrition.
And as for that big game called life? "It can only get easier," she said.
