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Massage
If
you have ever had a massage, you know how good it can make you feel.
You might even experience a little guilty pleasure. Massage is still
considered somewhat of a luxury, even for us humans.
For
me, as a former professional modern dancer, massage was a necessity, as
it is with many athletes. Dancers and athletes stretch, strain, jump,
run, turn and repeat many movements over and over and over again. Sound
familiar? Dogs do all of that too. In addition, they are capable of
performing some movements that, if done by the even the most adept
dancer, would leave her in traction.
All
of this activity causes wear and tear on soft tissues - muscles,
tendons and ligaments - and joints - the places where bone and soft
tissue come together. Cumulative damage manifests in mild to moderate
stiffness, soreness and lameness. And that is just ?normal?wear and
tear. If injury or ssurgery
are a part of your dog's life, more damage is done to affected areas
and the possibility of chronic soreness or lameness increases with use
and age.
Massage,
and other complementary modalities like chiropractic and physical
rehabilitation, as well as the medicine of acupuncture, can minimize
the damage from injury and surgery as well as prevent or push out the
painful effects of many chronic conditions that result in soreness and
lameness.
Athletic dogs can perform better and recover more quickly from strenuous activity with regular massage.
Senior and arthritic dogs get much needed attention; pain relief and increased mobility from massage.
Regular
massage keeps the blood flowing to remove toxic build-up in muscles and
helps muscle groups to do their designated jobs. Lameness is a sign of
compensation. To compensate for muscle or joint pain and its resulting
lack of use because of the pain, other muscle groups take up the slack
and in doing so they become as over-worked as the painful muscles are
under-worked. This sets up a compensatory pattern that, if left in
place, can cause significant issues with the ?good? muscles as well as
the sore ones. Massage can help restore balance to each muscle group
and allow the dog to work all muscles evenly.
Massage
is just a simple and good idea for all of us. If done with love and
focus, wonderful things can happen. We tend to focus on the physical
benefits of massage but sometimes it is the deeper and more subtle
affects that make massage a healing art as well as a skill. It is not
just the body that benefits, it is the whole being.
May 2007 Kim Jonah
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