[Dailydrool] Bob the Dog / chiropractors

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

> Bob the Dog, have you thought about trying a doggie chiropractor?   
> Barney Boy
> had a bad neck about 4 yrs ago and we found a chiropractor and in one
> treatment he got better and has been fine for all this time.  He is  
> almost 14.

This is a good suggestion. Our Elsinore and young Charlie see a  
veterinary chiropractor at least once a year. He used to be a human  
chiropractor, but then he went back to school and got licensed (AVCA)  
to be a veterinary chiropractor. They saw him just the other week,  
actually, for their annual adjustment. Our Elsinore wasn't eager to  
turn in circles clockwise (one of her "dance steps"), but after her  
adjustment, she's now turning in tight clockwise circles without any  
hesitating.

And here's our human testimonial for chiropractors--Ken, who likes to  
run, developed pain in one of his feet. The orthopedist he went to  
said it was plantar fascitis (or however it's spelled). Ken stretched  
his foot, put on it, soaked it in Epsom salts every night for a year  
and still had pain. I suggested he to see my chiropractor, the one  
who got me through a herniated disk when the neurosurgeon's physical  
therapist couldn't, because I was sure he was compensating for his  
foot when he walked and throwing his body out of alignment. So Ken  
went to my chiropractor and mentioned his foot pain while he was  
there. She felt around in his foot and said a bone in it had fallen  
out of place. She popped it back into place and like magic the foot  
pain was gone. That's when we realized that chiropractors aren't just  
about spines only; they adjust everything.

The only thing with veterinary chiropractors is to first be sure to  
get an x-ray of the area in question to rule out all other possible  
and/or contributing causes for the pain. When our Elsinore started  
having back pain, the chiropractor adjusted her several times but she  
was still stopping in her tracks and crying at odd moments. Her  
regular vet x-rayed her spine and discovered a pellet from a pellet  
gun, lodged in the area in which her sciatic nerve runs. When the  
pellet shifted, the vet surmised, it was hitting the sciatic nerve.  
There's no way the chiropractor could have detected that pellet  
through just a manual examination, and being people who don't go out  
and shoot at dogs, we never even considered the possibility that our  
Elsinore was carrying around that kind of evidence of human cruelty  
inside her body. Once the pellet was removed, Elsinore felt much  
better. She still has trouble with scar tissue from the surgery  
periodically annoying that nerve, but it's only every three or four  
months and a muscle relaxer gets it all sorted out quickly.

I have both dogs adjusted by their chiropractor annually because it  
makes such a difference in the way they move. Especially around their  
shoulders. This last time the chiropractor told me that dogs don't  
have collar bones the way humans do, so they don't really have  
anything to stabilize their shoulder area and keep things in place.  
This explained why both dogs were tight in their shoulders, Charlie  
more so on the left and Elsinore more so on the right. It's fun  
watching him adjust the dogs clear down to the tips of their tails,  
and even more fun to watch them get off the table and shake  
themselves hard and then prance around because they feel so good.

Elizabeth