This is how Canine Massage helped Joey with hind limb stiffness in just three treatments…
Name: Joey
Location: Doncaster, South Yorkshire
Reason for Treatment: Hind limb Stiffness
Age: 7
Breed: German Shepherd
Joey is a seven year old German Shepherd who has suffered with persistent stiffness in his hind limbs for the last couple of months. This was having an impact on his activities of daily living, i.e. walking, running and playing. Hind limb stiffness in dogs is very common.
When I first met Joey, you could tell he was full of character, like “a typical teenage boy.” He was mischievous, playful, cheeky and had a stubborn streak, but due to the pain he was in, his playful side didn’t always show.
Joey was a bit wary at first as to what was happening. By working slowly and steadily with my touch and by reassuring him, Joey began to trust me and relax into the treatment.
I always work in the comfort zone of the dog, so when Joey was reluctant to lie on his side, and wanted to sit or stand I would adapt my way of working and massaged a different area ie. his chest or neck, then move onto his back and hind quarters until he felt comfortable for me to proceed.
The first thing I noticed on assessing Joey was how hard his muscles were around his hindquarters. This is known as hypertonic (Hard muscles become congested and sore). He also had myofascial pain (you will see this as twitching of the skin) all along his back, which was also impacting on his movement and flexibility.
During Joey’s initial treatments we released a lot of tension from his body and as the treatments progressed and the muscles softened, this allowed us to work deeper into his muscles, reducing the amount of myofascial pain and hypertonicity (deep tissue and myofascial release techniques, were used). Due to having so much tension in his muscles this impeded Joey’s range of motion, so incorporating some facilitated stretching into the treatment brought alignment to facilitate positive change in his mobility & flexibility.
At the end of each session, Joey’s owner is given aftercare advice, what to expect and showed his mum what to do at home as I find the more owners become involved with their dogs treatment the better the final outcome is.
I am pleased to say that after his three Canine Massage treatments, Joey has shown great improvement.
I leave the final verdict on massage to Joey’s mum…
“Before visiting Jayne I knew very little about the benefits of Canine Massage Therapy, but seeing Jayne in action and the improvements in Joey I am convinced that Canine Massage would benefit most dogs. Joey continues to see Jayne for maintenance treatments and loves every minute of them and he still is his cheeky self and keeps her on her toes.”
