Aging is not easy for anyone, especially our dogs and cats. They may initially get weaker in the back end or find it hard to get up and down or might stop using stairs due to discomfort. This can be hard for pet parents to navigate a practical and affordable plan to help manage the inevitable aging process.
Animal Chiropractic can help with mobility restrictions, better balance, improve activity levels and can sometimes slow the progression of arthritis to a certain extent.
Who Is Considered Senior or Geriatric?
Unfortunately, dogs and cats age much faster than humans do. Certain breeds and different-sizes of dogs & cats age differently than others. The more appropriate definition for a senior dog/cat is any animal in the last 25 percent of their life, based on the standard for the breed. This is usually when we start to see the symptoms of aging, sans any specific injury or early onset disease, which can be co-managed via animal chiropractic.
What Is Animal Chiropractic?
Most people have heard of chiropractic for humans, but many are confused about what chiropractic actually is or how it can help with animals in mind. Chiropractors are trained to evaluate the spine for structural dysfunction, often referred to as subluxations. In the vet med world, a subluxation is a dislocation so this term can be confusing to DMVs if they are not familiar with how chiropractors use this word to describe a joint restriction or fixation.
Subluxations are areas in the spine that aren’t moving like they should be or are fixated in the wrong position so to speak. When dysfunction like this occurs, inflammation can build up and irritate the surrounding joints, nerves, discs, soft tissue and more, leading to pain and stiffness. A chiropractor specifically trained by a certified veterinarian chiropractic post-doctoral program is trained to manually palpate the spine and/or extremities, searching for heat, inflammation, muscle spasm and for joints that aren’t moving as they should. When the vet chiropractor locates a problematic area, a correction via an adjustment (manual or instrument assisted) in order to restore normal biomechanics. When it comes to animal chiropractic, the adjustment is very gentle and usually there’s typically no cracking or popping sounds as dog and cats joint angles in the spine are different than humans. Another reason why you should only have a certified animal chiropractor via the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association or the International Veterinary Chiropractic Association adjust your animal as the angles and technique is much different when compared to adjusting humans.
What Conditions in a Senior Dog Might Be Improved by Animal Chiropractic?
The spine of a senior dog or has endured a lifetime of wear and tear. This contributes to conditions we frequently see in practice, such as:
* Decreased mobility
* Discomfort with getting up and down
* Decreased rear muscle tone
* Arthritic and/or Degenerative changes to the bones and discs of the spine
Many of these symptoms are secondary to subluxations of the spine as they are often intertwined.
Initially, a joint ceases to move properly for a variety of reasons. This doesn’t cause too many (symptomatic) problems at a young age, but if it is left uncorrected, inflammation, scarring and bone spurs eventually builds to a point where it is uncomfortable for a dog or cat to fully engage a joint. When this happens, a pet parent might notice that their animal isn’t moving around the house or outside as they normally would, hesitant to use stairs or jump into the car/couch/bed or struggles to get comfortable in any position.
Over time, this discomfort starts to affect the muscles. If a dog or finds it painful to walk, or to get up from lying down, they will not do it whereas with a cat this can be harder to detect since cats sleep much more than dogs do. The muscles start to atrophy as additional stress is placed on the joints because there’s less muscle mass to support them. The discomfort leads to less movement and more muscle wasting as time goes on.
This cycle also contributes to arthritic disease. Spondylosis is the result of chronic inflammation and abnormal stress on a joint caused by abnormal biomechanics over a long period of time. A subluxation left uncorrected is exactly this. The lack of normal motion in the joint will lead to an inability to pump inflammation away. The longer the inflammation sits there, the more it eats away at cartilage. In addition, this loads a joint up with abnormal stress, and combined, these factors progressively lead to various arthritic conditions.
A properly delivered adjustment or mobilization often helps alleviate many of the problems senior dogs & cats deal with. An adjustment will restore normal motion to a joint. Restoring motion allows joints to pump inflammation away. With a decrease in inflammation, there’s a decrease in pain. When the pain is minimized, dogs & cats tend to be more much more mobile and willing to be active. This will lead to increased muscle tone.
How Do I Find a Certified Animal Chiropractor?
There are two routes to becoming an animal chiropractor. Practitioners must first complete veterinary or chiropractic school and receive a doctorate. After that, they attend additional training for animal/veterinary chiropractic with an accredited program that includes both textbook and hands-on curricula. At the end of training, they have an opportunity to certify with one of the major boards, among them the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association and the International Veterinary Chiropractic Association.
