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About Animal Chiropractic

When and when not to use it

Many people ask me how I became an animal chiropractor. The truth is I went to university and did a Master of Chiropractic Science (animal chiropractic) degree . This sort of training is available in selected universities across the globe. The other thing people ask me is why I did this sort of training. After being in veterinary practice for twenty years I realised that there were some things that we were not dealing with. One of these was animals that had a pain or lameness issue and we failed to find a cause. There was no pathology evident on X-rays. I had heard about chiropractic and osteopathy but really knew nothing about these disciplines. I set out to find out and discovered that the palpatory skills of many of the human practitioners were in another dimension. It is the development of this sort of skill which alters the way you can look at an animal. It takes some years of work and is a personal skill that gets better every day.

There is now days a strong demand for chiropractic care for canines for the treatment of musculo-skeletal and other disorders particularly those problems which are seen to be limiting the performance of the animal. With the huge growth of canine sports across the globe there is a concurrent demand for keeping these animals fit, pain free and at the top of their sporting ladder. In the event an animal is not performing well then it seems the trainer knows there is something wrong usually very early in the piece. Because they recognise signs early very often the problems can be rectified with chiropractic care in just one or two treatments.
In other instances there are soft tissue injuries. Treating an acute (soft) tissue injury requires a different approach than treating either a long standing injury or a spinal movement restrictive injury. The mainstream approach a lot of the time is to determine whether or not the animal needs an X-ray then provide pain relief by way of an anti-inflammatory tablet or injection or both, and rest the animal.

Our approach is different. Primarily localising the primary lesion is achieved after a manual examination which considers the spinal structure and the soft tissues, with the animal standing still and where necessary in motion. In a quadruped (a four legged animal) a loading pattern will occur when there is a problem. In other words, because the animal had four weight bearing limbs they will shift their weight to favour the injured area. Because of this loading pattern there is consequent spinal torsion, ligamentous torsion and changes in forces through muscles and tendons. Sounds really basic but it can get complex.

This load shift occurs before a visual lameness develops, and we need to be able to detect this.This is what animal chiropractic doctors are trained to do. If lameness is developing then the animal required treatment a good deal earlier.If the primary lesion is in the spine then a decision needs to be made whether or not it will respond to chiropractic adjustment. Remember that all chiropractic adjustments are not fast moves that result in a ‘crack’ sound. There are also low force and even non-force techniques.

In general,in many acute injuries chiropractic adjustment may make the situation worse. In these cases treatment may consist of acupuncture, medical laser, homotoxicology (use of the Heel products) herbal or other supportive medicine. If the severity of the injury is such the animal requires non-steroidal antiinflammatories then a mainstream approach may be adopted. In some cases an X-ray is needed, particularly when pathology, such as OCD, is suspected.

There are a huge range of situations where chiropractic is effective. In most cases, unlike humans, the animal will respond to one treatment. The reason for this is that given the opportunity animals want to be well and will heal themselves and look after themselves. Still there are the loveable clowns and buffoons of the canine world who seem to frequent the clinic at regular intervals.

Chiropractors recognize innate intelligence which can be defined as the intrinsic ability of a healthy organism to react physiologically to the changing conditions of the external and internal environment. The core principle of chiropractic theory is that the nervous system controls and coordinates function of all tissues of the body. If the nervous system is not functioning normally then the area of the body supplied by that part of the nervous system will be adversely affected.Thus chiropractic is concerned with the investigation of the relationship between structure (primarily of the spine) and function (primarily of the nervous system), of the body, that leads to restoration and preservation of health.

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