Questions About Massage
If you’ve ever had a really good massage, you know how wonderful it makes you feel for hours or even days afterward. And surely you’ve noticed your dog or cat loves a good tummy rub or scratch behind the ears. It’s no surprise that massage is a pet-pleaser, too, and it offers animals some of the same benefits it offers people.
If your pet is anxious, massage can help soothe nerves and alleviate stress. If your pet is highly active, massage can alleviate spasms, trigger points, and the tensions that build with high activity levels.
If your pet has neck pain, back pain, or concerns related to bad posture, massage can help aid muscles return to their proper relaxed states, increasing comfort level and improving posture.
Alpha dogs particularly benefit from massage, as they stay busy with various tasks and rarely relax fully throughout the course of a day. Massage can help an alpha pet unwind for a little while.
A less common reason to have your pet massaged is to help it during the grieving process. If your pet’s housemate has recently died or has moved out of the home, massage can help a pet relax and handle grief more openly.
It’s best to massage a pet after his daily exercise routine and when the house is quiet, relatively free of distractions and traffic. With a few exceptions, a dog relaxes best in an area away from other pets and family members.
Questions About Acupuncture
- Your veterinary acupuncturist must be a licensed veterinarian.
- Your veterinary acupuncturist should have formal training in the practice of veterinary acupuncture.
In most states, veterinary acupuncture is considered a surgical procedure that only licensed veterinarians may legally administer. A veterinarian is in the best position to properly diagnose an animal’s health problem and then to determine whether it will likely benefit from an acupuncture treatment, or whether its problem requires a chemical prescription, surgery or no intervention at all.
Because of the differences in anatomy — and the potential for harm if the treatments are done incorrectly — only a properly trained veterinarian should perform acupuncture on animals. The more your veterinarian knows about traditional Chinese philosophies and the western scientific basis for acupuncture the more you can be assured that your animals will be treated properly.
Conventional Western drugs act quickly but sometimes come with unwanted side effects. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal therapy often are used to avoid those side effects and, at the very least, to make them more bearable. By combining Western and Eastern medical knowledge, Dr. DuBose provides your pet with the most appropriate and best possible care.
Questions About Hydrotherapy