What is Horse Chiropractic?

What is Horse Chiropractic?

Horse Chiropractic, just like human chiropractic, is a drug-free addition to your animal's health care. Chiropractic can most importantly improve performance, decrease pain and improve your horse’s well being. Chiropractic accomplishes this by restoring normal range of motion in the joints.

Chiropractic care focuses on the mechanical causes of problems; nerves get irritated or pinched by a joint not moving properly. Either a tight muscle or a joint can get "stuck" and not moving its full range of motion. This is called a Subluxation or Misalignment. Chiropractic adjustments treat these subluxations by gently restoring proper range of motion in the joint, which frees up the nerve and muscle tissue, allowing them to work better.

Chiropractic care is helpful in horses when an injury has occurred, due to the involvement of the joints, muscles and nerves. Some common injuries include: slips, falls, other traumas, even arthritis, pinched nerves, disc diseases and other degenerative diseases.

How did my horse get a subluxation?

Regular every day life can cause slips, spills, tripping, falls and anything else from small to large traumas or accidents. Degenerative issues in the joints can be a result of long-term subluxations as well. Inactivity, believe it or not can even cause subluxations. Since horses can't talk, they have to communicate in different ways, sometimes it can be positive or negative.

Who should check my horse for a subluxation?

A certified Chiropractor or Veterinarian who is specially trained in Animal Chiropractic. There are a few schools that specifically teach veterinarians and chiropractors about the anatomy and proper adjusting techniques regarding animal chiropractic. The International Veterinary Chiropractic Association (IVCA) and the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association (AVCA) are the only orgianizations that test the knowledge and clinical skills of these students. This is very important, with chiropractic, you are dealing with the joints, muscles and delicate nerves in your horse’s body, and with an untrained person, damage or worsening of the condition can occur. There are some veterinarians and chiropractors that claim to have taken classes in a weekend seminar and know the techniques, but would you rather have someone who spent months to a year training or someone who spent a weekend training? It is your horse, so you get to choose.

Usually two to three adjustments are performed. Once your horse has improved, a future schedule can be determined based on type and severity of injury, your animal's condition, show and activity schedule. I believe chiropractic is an essential part of any athlete's training program, human or animal. All human athletes receive various types of therapy during training and competition. Likewise, our animal can be a pricey emotional and financial investment, but its easier to prevent small problems from becoming larger and more costly ones in the future. With proper joint motion there is a better chance of avoiding the larger problem.