by Dr. Bill Ormston
Animal chiropractic is about having an intact nervous system. It's about being able to adapt, being able to make changes in your body and your animal's body. It's about being able to learn from the environment and respond in an appropriate manner so that we can continue to live and breathe. It's not about being able to look at x-rays.
Animal chiropractic is about removing interference from the body's nervous system or an animal's nervous system. Are X-rays good? Yes. Are X-rays needed? No.
If I feel what I think might be a broken bone, I'm not going to adjust that joint. I'm going to adjust the rest and we're going to see what happens! Does it mean that a week from now we might not take x-rays? You bet. But right now, it all depends on what the symptoms are and how the animal responds to the adjustment.
“We use the adjustment in our practice as a diagnostic tool. It is the most powerful economic diagnostic tool there is. We restore the nervous system, remove interference from the nervous system between the brain and the body parts and let the body heal.”
Had a lady come to get her dog adjusted. She said, “hey he's been limping on the paw. I need you to really pay attention to that and look at it and see what's going on”. Now in our practice, we have time for in-depth exploration and in-depth question and answer, and then there are sessions where we adjust.
When we adjust, we spend probably less than five minutes per dog. We look at the animal and assess the animal with our hands. We look at the range of motion, find the vertebral subluxations, remove the vertebral subluxations, and then we see what the body does.
“When you remove all the primary subluxations in a dog, the dog will shake. If the dog doesn't shake, put the dog back on the table, find out why he didn't shake, remove that vertebral subluxation, and they shake!”
Will it cure the problem? I Don't know! That's not what animal chiropractic is about. If the dog doesn't limp after the adjustment then great! If the dog is still limping, we have to give it some time because it took the body time to get sick. It takes the body time to get well. How much time? 12 to 24 hours, maybe up to 72 hours before we see all the adjustment changes and then at the end of that time, is it better? No? Is it the same? If it's the same, Is it still? or is it again? A lot of people go, what do you mean? Well if the dog got a little bit better or the horse got a little bit better and then he slipped back again. It's again and not still so that means the chiropractic adjustment did something so we'll go ahead and adjust again a second time.
See what happens if the adjustment holds longer or does more good the second time. Then we know we're headed in the right direction and what we need to do is stay out of the body's way and let its own ability to heal take its course because anything we do from the outside decreases the body's ability to respond to its environment in an appropriate way. I mean let's face it, that's what drugs are for, right?
Every drug has a side effect and you know there are odds. And do you really care if one in a hundred thousand dogs died from a drug? If your dog is that one, YES! You don't really care about the other 99,999. You only care about that one. So if your animal is the one that has the side effects, you don't really care about the odds. And that's unfortunate, but that's the way it is. With Animal Chiropractic, the adjustment from a well-trained adjuster has zero chances of side effects. If you're getting side effects, then make sure your adjuster is well-trained and knows what he's doing.
By side effects, we're not talking about a yelp, a weenie, or rearing up when they get adjusted because a good animal chiropractor will find sore spots. So Animal Chiropractic, above, down, and inside out. Know your odds and keep adjusted.
Learn more about Animal Chiropractic! Watch full episodes of the Animal Chiropractic Clinic Chatter