You may think complementary wellness is just for people, but cat owner Mary Arabe has found that alternative therapies can work wonders for a pet’s wellbeing. Last August, Ms. Arabe’s nine-year-old grey and black tiger cat, Leo, came home, clearly in pain, with a severe limp and an elbow swollen three times its normal size. Ms. Arabe details, ‘He kind of lay around the barn that day; you could tell he was hurting. He was in so much agony I thought, “If someone can’t remove this animal’s pain I have to put him down.”’ When the vet told her there was nothing he could do for Leo, Ms. Arabe took the cat to chiropractor Rick Tsai, who manipulated Leo’s joints after an x-ray revealed a large amount of swelling and fluid retention. Ms. Arabe notes, ‘We brought the cat home, and the next day he was walking fine. Two thirds of the swelling in the arm was gone. Whatever Dr. Tsai adjusted, it worked. He healed him.’
Ms. Arabe is just one of a growing number of pet owners who swear by their chiropractors for relieving arthritis, sprains, joint pain and other ailments in their furry little friends. In 1987 – 92 years after human and animal chiropractic first began – animal chiropractic began to gain wide appeal when the late Sharon Willoughby-Blake, a veterinarian and chiropractor, started Options for Animals. This practice taught vets and chiropractors how to adjust animals and, two years later, the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association, a professional membership group and the main certifying agency in North America, was formed. According to Robbie Hroza, vice president of operations for Options for Animals, 2,000 students have now gone through their programme.
Nonetheless, chiropractic remains a controversial practise, in both people and pets. It’s true that research shows chiropractic care can be more effective than medications for people with problems like neck pain, but other studies have linked forceful neck manipulation to strokes, and even claimed that unfavourable chiropractic outcomes are under-reported in medical trials. And that’s just in people. When it comes to animal care, there are only a few scientific studies about chiropractic’s efficacy, and tensions exist both within and between the chiropractic and veterinary communities. Depending on the US state, a chiropractor may or may not be allowed to touch an animal without either a veterinarian’s referral or direct veterinary supervision.
In its pain management guidelines for dogs and cats, the American Animal Hospital Association and the American Association of Feline Practitioners warn that ‘chiropractic methods potentially can cause injury through the use of inappropriate technique or excessive force…There is currently insufficient published evidence of efficacy in dogs and cats to make specific recommendations about the use of chiropractic intervention.’ In fact, the American Chiropractic Association’s position is that the term “veterinary chiropractic” is a misnomer and should ‘not be used to refer to the application of manipulative techniques to animals.’ So, then, was Ms. Arabe making a mistake in taking Leo to Dr. Tsai?
‘A person should be allowed to take their animal anywhere they want if they think it benefits them,’ Dr. Tsai asserts. He points out that while he has worked in tandem with many veterinarians over the years, a lot of them don’t like his field because it takes away their business. Gene Giggleman, a veterinarian, animal chiropractor and a professor of anatomy at Parker University College of Chiropractic, in Dallas, adds. ‘My philosophy as a vet is “chiropractic first, drugs and surgery second,” but a lot of vets don’t understand or know about animal chiropractic, and so they don’t refer people.’
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