chiropractor for agility dogs?

sarasomething

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my agility instructor mentioned getting her agility dogs adjusted by a chiropractor every so often. does anyone else do this? how often / what adjustments do your dogs get?
 
my agility instructor mentioned getting her agility dogs adjusted by a chiropractor every so often. does anyone else do this? how often / what adjustments do your dogs get?

I tend to go when my dog seems off. Like when he's popping out of the weaves all the time (which is rare). Or if he's dropping bars (he never drops bars, so if it's not bad handling, then something is wrong).

As for what adjustments....whatever they need. Each individual dog will need something different than another dog. So you wouldn't go and ask for XYZ. The chiro will determine what is going on.

My last appt was with a better than average chiro/vet. She doesn't believe in telling me that my dog needs to be adjusted every X weeks. She told me to come in when something was off with him, or maybe once to twice a year. I love when chiros tell me that (because usually they want you to come in on a regular basis and I don't believe dogs need that, just like humans don't).

It seems to help my dog. Cuz after I go, he seems to hit those weaves perfectly again.
 
I took my dogs for the first time a couple weeks ago, it was pretty interesting.

She said something along the same lines as what Cheryl's chiro said. That most dogs don't need to come in every month, but just to come in when necessary. She said that at first it might be better to come in on a regular basis as they get used to it, but even that's not necessary.

Unfortunately for me the lady only comes during the week during the day, except on Tuesday nights and that's when our agility class is. (They recommend not doing any strenuous exercise after adjustment).

Anyways, I had to ask the chiro where my dogs were out. She just started adjusting. Totally depends on the dog, depends on the day, what they do, etc...one of my dogs was very out--pelvis, sacrum, atlas, and the other required only minor adjustments.
 
I get my Chloe adjusted if she starts popping bars. She had Lymes disease last year, and after that, she gets out of whack every so often. Dandie has not problems ever, so I have never gotten her adjusted.
 
Chiros

My guys get adjusted alot when competing.With Shadow when he popped the 10th pole at trials then I know he is out.With Sting it is he is usally dropping bars.
 
I believe in prevention rather than treatment. So Leo is on maintenance about every 8-10 weeks and Che is different story, he was limping again and I started him on doxy just to see where that would lead us. Che had pretty extensive physical therapy and probably will be in the future.
 
I used to go to a vet-chiropractor for Deska, but find the physio much better. The vet-chiro kept adjusting Deska but kept misdiagnosing the cause.

Amongs flyballers physio is preferred, although that may just be through referrals. Both my dogs go to physio regularly before or after competitions. Deska will always need to go while he is competing because of his joint disease, Tully goes when her shoulder injury flares up. The reason flyballers prefer physio is they give you an exercise and strengthening & stretching program to do at home and at comps, particularly good for sporting dogs.
 
I know that a lot of people do use Ciro on there dogs, I tend to lean towards the phisio therapy side Myself as we did with Storm when she got hurt, because while Ciro treats an issue immediately it really doesn't treat what caused it,usually poor conditioning or weak muscles, the phisio tends to treat the problem that caused it in the first place buy strengthening the weak areas that can allow the problem to occur.

As A distance runner we always hear about how a good strong core will help your running and prevent injury over the log haul blah,blah blah,, but we generally never really work at it at least not tooo hard ;), Now that I am training with a trainer for triathlon and Iron Man I have had to add weights & core work to my workouts a few time a week, I am seeing huge difference's all for the better, in only a couple of months of workouts... again our dogs are not all that different from us. Can you do weights with you dog well not really but a good solid round of rope tug will accomplish much the same thing as will some balance work on a bosu ball or exercise ball will for them, same with lots of fetch & frisbee play.

If you take a dog knows how to do agility but is not really fit and strong( generally a couch potato when he not doing agility) and run him a lot or even too hard you will eventually probably have some issues show up, but if he get's regular workouts , training, and hard play ,and you do streaching and strenght exercises with them then your chances or running the dog hard & more frequently without any problems showing up are much much improved.

As you can probably tell I am becomming a pretty firm believer that proper conditioning for both our dogs and ourselves will pay of big dividend's over the long haul. All of us Myself Cosmo & Stormy have been working real hard
at it the last few months and it certainly seem to be working for everybody so far anyways as far as I can tell.
 
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