Have you ever bumped yourself or fallen in a way that didn’t seem that harmful at the time, but you had lasting aches and pains from it? Our pets do these types of things often. The body tries to find ways to get itself back in alignment, but sometimes the best it can do is find new ways to compensate so the injury doesn’t hurt as much. This compensation can be a set up for additional injury.
The practice of medicine that involves focusing on correction the form, structure, and movement of body parts to promote healing is called Osteopathy. Chiropractice medicine shares many of the same beliefs regarding form and function but focuses more on the skeletal system. Osteopathic treatments may involve manipulation of bones and joints, but also looks to restrictions that occur deeper in the tissues at the level of the blood, lymph, and nervous tissues. Through hands on assessment, a practitioner can feel where body rhythms are moving slower or tissues have a reduced range of motion. By restoring these rhythms and releasing restrictions, tissue function is enhanced, the patient feels relief from pain and discomfort, and undetected problem areas are “fixed” by the body.
Our pets can have back problems, joint issues, liver and spleen congestion, poor lymph movement from injuties, infection, vaccines, etc., and many more typees of restrictions. Osteopathic techniques are a very effective, gentle way to address these problems. Often clearing vascular and lymph restrictions can result in immediate improvement in a patient. For those pets with longer standing, deep seated problems, it may take 3-5 days to see the full effect of the body responding to treatment at such a deep level. Usually there are 2-3 treatments needed to clear the initial restrictions. Sometimes there are foods that cause inflammation in the body and eventually result in pain and reduced motion of tissues. These can be successfully treated through osteopathic manipulation and diet changes.
The use of osteopathic methods for diagnosing and treating animals has been so helpful to our dog and cat patients at Glacial Ridge Veterinary Clinic that we make a commitment to train all of our doctors in these methods. This trainign can take up to 2-3 years and is not covered in Veterinary School. Our pets love the treatments and often we are working with the body to fix something mechanical that regular medicine is not designed to do. If your pet doesn’t move as well as he used to or if you know she has had tahuma or surgery in the past, don’t hesitate to call us! We’d love to help! Call 320-634-3558.