[Dailydrool] Vet Chiropractors...experiences???

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

Our Elsinore and young Charlie are adjusted once or twice a year by a doggie chiropractor. He used to be a people chiropractor, but then he went to school to learn how to adjust animals. And he plays mandolin in a band because we’re in Nashville and everyone in Nashville’s in a band. Except for us. Because someone has to be in the audience, right?

I can tell a big difference in how Elsinore and Charlie move after an adjustment. Their gaits are smoother, and they can turn in tighter circles, indicating looser spines. No more kinks. Neither care for the actual adjustment. In fact, one of them has had to be muzzled for it (I’m not going to name any names) because we gotta protect those mandolin-playing fingers. But they seem to really appreciate how they feel after the adjustment’s over.

The chiropractor comes to our house, which makes it more expensive, but he’s about 40 miles away, tucked into the country somewhere and, I suspect, difficult to find. He carries his equipment in his pocket. It looks like a small nail gun or something. My own chiropractor uses a human-sized one on me sometimes. For awhile the adjustments were done on our dining room table, but then we discovered the dogs cooperated better when they’re done out in the yard. He adjusts not only the dogs’ spines all the way down to the tips of their tails (they really don’t like having their tails pulled into alignment), but he also adjusts their legs, feet, and heads. He does manual adjusting with his hands and uses that little nail gun thing. 

Something he told me early on is that it’s very important for dogs to have their nails kept trimmed down. That helps keep their weight spread evenly across their pads, which helps keep their spines in alignment. I always make sure Elsinore and Charlie’s nails are trimmed just before he comes so I won’t get scolded. 

One thing to keep in mind about veterinary chiropractors, though, is that they don’t always do x-rays, and it’s not a bad idea to have your dog’s spine x-rayed first, just to have an idea of what’s going on in there. Shortly after we got Elsinore, she started freezing in place and yarking in pain. I called in the chiropractor, who adjusted her several times over several months with not much of a difference in terms of her sudden onsets of back pain. So I took her to the vet, who took x-rays, and I’ll be darned, there was a pellet from a pellet gun lodged in her back. It was bumping into her sciatic nerve at odd moments. No adjusting in the world would have fixed that problem. We had the pellet surgically removed but kept on the with chiropractic adjustments because they really do make a difference. 

Young Charlie wound up favoring a back leg doing something he’s been told not to do a million times but did anyway. The chiropractor came, felt around, and figured out Charlie’s leg and hip socket were out of whack. A few well-practiced jerks, and Charlie was back to normal again. 

So that’s my veterinary chiropractor testimony. I can see a difference and feel it’s worth the expense. Oh, and one difference between veterinary and human chiropractic care is that animals don’t need adjustments as frequently as humans, which helps with the expense. Once an animal’s alignment is in place and seems to be set, an adjustment once or twice a year is sufficient for maintaining that adjustment. 

Elizabeth