Clients and vet are often amazed at the difference massage can make to dogs with issued like Anterior Cruciate Ligament tears (ACL). Quite often when I’m talking to them about massage therapy for issues that aren’t necessarily muscular injuries they’re unsure of what the benefits of massage will be. Now whilst massage won’t, for example, heal an ACL tear one of the things it will do is deal with the areas of overcompensation which can dramatically improve the quality of the dog’s life!
So what is overcompensation?
Overcompensation is the body nature response to pain. When our dogs are in pain due to conditions like ACL tears, Arthritis and Hip Dysplasia the dog will shift their weight to other parts of the body to try and minimise the pain they’re feeling. Just as when your foot hurts, you limp and put more weight on the other foot to avoid pain and prevent further damage. The other muscles overcompensate by taking the weight from the weakened area.
These overcompensation patterns are not the body’s optimal way of functioning and after only a short amount of time can damage the body further, resulting in the initial injury causing another as the overworked muscles become hypertonic and susceptible to incurring trigger points, strains, muscle spasms and myofascial pain. All of these issues can cause added pain for your dog and lessen the quality of their life affecting them not just physically but emotionally too. This in one of the reasons it’s so important to deal with these areas. It’s not however easy to detect areas of overcompensation because the dog may present this as the ‘primary’ area of injury so a thorough understanding of canine anatomy is essential.
These overcompensation patterns really demonstrate just how the different parts of the body don’t work in isolation and why when treating a dog it’s essential to treat the body as a whole.
Massage therapy, when done by a professional can:
- Increase strength and stability
- Reduce tension, aches and discomfort
- Greatly reduce the risk of injury
- Greater energy
- returned zest for life
- Increased raging of motion.
- A pain free life.
“Our 10 year old westie Luna suffered a cruciate ligament injury on a hind leg. To avoid surgery we followed our vets recommendation to start out with complete rest and medication for 6 weeks. After 6 weeks we started to see improvement, and the following month we saw incremental improvements, but there seemed to be a long way to full recovery and we were not sure if we would end up needing surgery in the end. One way we came across Caroline’s car by coincidence, and we decided to contact her. Luna has had 3 treatments over 3 weeks so far, and her improvement has been dramatic, starting already after the first treatment. Caroline’s skills and professionalism is outstanding, and Luna absolutely loves her. We continue the weekly treatment with some additional sessions to reinforce the the result she has obtained already. Caroline is a wonderful person and a dog’s best friend and we can only recommend her to dog owners, who want to add some quality to the life of their pet.”- Annette & Carl
If you’re interested in finding out whether massage therapy could benefit your dog call today on 608 803 897.