If you’re a dog person you know how much of a part of your family they become. I’ve had dogs my whole life growing up and now have a 13 year old Redbone Coonhound mix that has been my hiking partner, greeter when I get home, and protector of both my kids. It is tough watching them as they age and have trouble getting up and moving around. They can’t tell you what hurts and just want to please so they still try to do what they used to.

The options for pets are usually no different than they are for people with similar issues. A dog presenting with difficulty getting up and around will usually be treated with medications to reduce muscle spasm, control pain and reduce inflammation. If those treatments don’t work they may be recommended to have surgery.

Often times puppy parents don’t have the means to do the expensive testing we would do for people like MRIs and surgerys. This is what brought the pups in this study to a Chiropractor.

In this paper they reviewed the cases of 24 different dogs that all had some level of paralysis of their hind legs. Some also had trouble controlling their bowel or bladder. They were a wide range of ages, 3 to 17 years old, and all types of breeds and sizes. All of them were treated with Chiropractic adjustments and some with some stretching and mobilization of the joints of the hips and spine.

All of the dogs in the study regained use of their hind legs during care. Some in as soon as one or two visits some took up to 16 visits. In this study the doctors felt the dogs had misalignments or subluxations in their spines and pelvis. Due to the shape of a dogs spinal canal there is much less room for the spinal cord to move and therefor the misaligments of the spine cause much more severe symptoms in the dogs than they would in a person. Adjusting these areas in the spine reduced the inflammation and irritation to the joints and subsequently the spinal cord restoring normal function for the dogs.

Something interesting I learned reading this study is that D.D. Palmer, the founder of Chiropractic, started adjusting animals to discredit people who were saying that the only benefit of Chiropractic care came from a placebo effect. Placebo effects don’t work on animals as they don’t know what you’re doing, but Chiropractic care does!