What Does a Dog Chiropractor do?

Yes, I'm a human chiropractor, but I'm also a dog chiropractor. Patients always look surprised when they find that out, but it really makes a lot of sense... dogs have spines. They get injured and hurt. Chiropractic care works wonders, so why wouldn't you get your dog adjusted? ;)

It was a natural progression for me, from working on humans to working on dogs. And shortly after I graduated from chiropractic school I took a course in Veterinary Orthopedic Manipulation, or V.O.M. for short. It’s taught by a vet named Dr. Bill Inman, and it uses an adjusting device similar to an Activator.

The course was a 4 day affair, with 2 days of lecture and then 2 days out at a stable working on horses. I’m able to adjust horses with my training, but it’s not a niche that I’ve really worked on, and so I’m known as the dog chiropractor. Cats, too, by the way. But they’re a little more difficult.

Dr. Inman devised V.O.M. when he was dating a chiropractor. He learned about the chiropractic philosophy (the nervous system controls and coordinates all the functions of the body down to the cellular level and anything that interferes with that transmission is bad – chiropractors adjust the spine to correct those interferences, which is good). When the light bulb went on for him (which is really common in medical professionals when they finally realize it’s not just about back pain or headaches – and then they realize that neuro-anatomy and physiology back up what we do) he realized that many of the conditions he was treating in animals might respond amazingly well to a dog chiropractor.

He was right!

He tested it on everything… from acral lick dermatitis to hip dysplasia to paralysis due to slipped discs. And many of those animals responded so well their owners thought it was a miracle.

Let’s take acral lick dermatitis for example. This is where a dog licks its paw so much it licks the fur right off and the constant licking irritates the skin. Often the dog won’t stop, and will cause injury to the paw and then it has a bleeding sore that never heals because the pup won’t leave it alone.

Imagine your arm fell asleep and is waking up. What do you feel? Pins and needles and tingling, right? Well that feeling can also come from a disc in the neck pressing on a nerve. Now imagine you’re a dog and you have pins and needles in your paw. You don’t know why your paw feels weird, it just does. Your puppy brain doesn’t know anatomy and that the feelings could be coming from a problem in the neck, so you do what pups do. You chew and lick the paw.

But that doesn’t help because the problem isn’t in the paw. It’s in the neck. And that is what a dog chiropractor can do. By working on the spine, we can help with acral lick dermatitis.My experience is that the sooner we can get to a problem, the greater the chance of helping. Like with humans, the longer the condition lasts, the harder it is to correct.

Some dog chiropractors adjust animals manually, and although I’ve learned how, I prefer to use the adjusting tool. The reason is simply that it’s more comforting to the dog, and I don’t have to worry about wrestling anyone who might bite me. It works as well as a manual adjustment by delivering a thrust into the spine that causes a neurological reset.

If you live within an hour of the Antelope Valley and would like to have your dog worked on, feel free to call me. I make house calls. ;)

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