January 8, 2011

Hello,

I hope your new year is off to a great start. This issue of Just the Right Touch looks at animal massage.

Dogs, cats, and horses (and probably other animals) can benefit from massage as much as people do. Some of the many benefits of animal massage include:

• Improved quality of movement
• Relaxed muscles that support joint health and function
• Better circulation
• Improved athletic agility and coordination
• Reduction of adhesions, knots, and other restrictions.

Plus, you and your pet can bond through massage. Some resources:

Hands On - Canine Therapeutic Massage for Sports and Pet Dogs (DVD)

The Healing Touch for Cats: The Proven Massage Program for Cats

Equine Massage: A Practical Guide

Equine Massage for Performance Horses (DVD)

Holistic Aromatherapy for Animals: A Comprehensive Guide to the Use of Essential Oils & Hydrosols with Animals

If you are interested in professional animal massage training, here are lists of dog massage schools and equine massage therapy schools.

Massage Your Dog - A Great Way to Give Back Your Pet's Friendship

If you are a dog lover, you would be a witness on how dogs are indeed man's best friends. They are not just good buddies, they are also great stress relievers, a source of happiness and, of course, they will do what it takes to protect you. If you are looking for ways to repay those great things they have given you, show them love, give them treats, and massage your dog. They will surely love the treatment if you just do the massage right.

Massaging your dog has a lot of benefits for your pet. It not only makes him feel special and relaxed, it also gives a lot of health benefits - from improving blood circulation and improving hair growth to decreasing soreness and pain, especially for working dogs.

Learning how to massage your dog can be easy. There are techniques that you can learn to give the massage correctly. If you are all set to give your dog a massage, here are suggestions.

Before you start massaging your dog, make him feel comfortable with your touch. Run your hand gently from his head to his tail. This also helps in determining if the dog has sore muscles or wounds that you have never noticed.

Kneading is one thing you can do to massage your pet. This helps stimulate muscle fibers, as well as the skin and the hair coat. You can do kneading by just simply pinching and rolling the skin, but if you want to stimulate muscle fibers, you can also do deep kneading.

Tapotement is another massage technique for your dog that helps stimulates your pet. However, never use tapotement with dogs who have been abused in the past. This technique includes cupping, tapping and brushing.

Efflurage, on the other hand, is a massage technique that is done in gentle circular motion you can do with one hand or with one hand over the other. This technique to massage your dog improves blood circulation and can be done on the entire body.

Even a simple stroking massage is helpful in quieting and calming the animal and should be done gently and slowly.

Learn these different massage techniques to help improve the health of your pet and help him relax and be stress-free. Giving him a massage is indeed a great way to give back the friendship that your pet has given you for all this time.

About the Author

Carolyn Anderson is a dog lover and loves giving her dogs massage. To learn more about the correct way to massage your dogs, check out Dog Massage Secrets. Also check out Golden Retrievers, where you can learn everything you need to know in raising and training an energetic Golden Retriever.

Equine Massage For Releasing Scar Tissue

Scar tissue can restrict movement in adjacent joints, eventually creating injury to the joint itself. This type of restrictive tissue can become stronger and as non-elastic as connective tissue like tendons and cartilage. After an injury, collagen fibers are laid down in a sporadic and unorganized pattern to prevent the recurrence of injury. If you have ever patched a hole in a pair of jeans with the zig-zag stitch on your sewing machine, you know how this works.

Scar tissue occurs as a result of injury, surgery, or repetitive motion. These different types of injuries will create a variation in the type of scar that they create. For example, a shear injury would be a cut caused by surgery, or a barbed wire cut, or you often see them on a horse's forehead from a trailer loading incident. In this case, the tissue is severed, never to be matched up perfectly again.

A compression injury is caused by force trauma. An example of this type of injury would be getting kicked by another horse, causing a large, round swelling under the skin that will leave a hard clump of scar tissue resembling a hard mass. The injured part becomes resistant to movement due to pain, so the non-movable area begins to lay down scarring to the bruised cells. Even though this is not the worst type of injury, it can become the thickest and most difficult tissue to break through.

Lastly, in a repetitive motion injury, tissue wears down from constant friction. The body builds scar tissue as the muscle or joint continues to break down by defying the body's signals. This type of scar buildup can be in the form of hardening of soft tissue or bone spurring due to osteoarthritis. If you have ever seen a horse with a giant, non-movable knee, it is a long-term result of the body trying to heal a chronic condition by sending more and more bone to the site. Although this bony type of buildup cannot be removed by massage therapy, the adjoining soft tissue can be mobilized and possibly become unstuck from the bony growth.

Massage for Scar Tissue

There is no guarantee that manual therapy can break up the tissue, and you must understand that by mobilizing tissue that has grown over like a scar, you will be required to create a new injury by pulling the adhered tissue from the adjoining tissue. This can be painful, and requires a new healing process attended by more therapy.

In many cases, where an athletic horse has been retired due to an old injury, it is quite worth the time and effort. I have worked with many cases of scar tissue, and seeing the benefits of my efforts has been worth the long process.

Be sure that you understand the physiology of the tissue and bone in the body part that you are working with before beginning this type of therapy, and I always recommend consulting with the horse's vet so that they can approve of your plan.

First, try to find out the exact etiology of the injury. Most importantly, how old is the scar? If an old injury carries chronic inflammation, several months and maybe years of tissue could be built up. A rule of thumb is that it takes as long to break down scar tissue as it took to build. This might give you an idea of what you are facing.

Secondly, evaluate the injury. If there is still heat in the area, it has become chronic and might still be building scar tissue. You should not massage an inflamed area. You should discuss this with the horse's vet. It may be necessary to give anti-inflammatory medication or an icing program to stop the chronic process before going forward.

Also, evaluate if the horse has been compensating by not using the part. If the injury is in a limb, a horse will sometimes stop using that particular limb and may be overdeveloping muscles in other parts of the body. In this case, you may have to incorporate some additional bodywork to these areas as part of the scar therapy.

Be careful here. A long term, painful injury might have the horse on edge as you are handling the sensitive area. Do not perform these techniques unless you have checked with the veterinarian and she is confident in your ability as a handler. This undertaking can be dangerous. Remain open to changing your plan according to how the horse responds.

Remember, you will be creating a new injury by working through scar tissue. You may have to work in short sessions, mobilizing the adjacent joints, icing, then letting it rest for a day or so. As the scar begins to release, you will need to keep the area mobile while the damage that you create heals properly. Never force an adjacent joint. Release the soft tissue, then gently stretch the area while mobilizing the skin and fascia involved.

Here is an example of how to use manual therapy on adhered tissue:

1. Effleurage (gently stroking) the areas surrounding the adhered towards the heart.
2. Either place an ice cup (paper cup with frozen water that you can tear away like a popsicle) or rub the adhered area with an ice cup to desensitize the area.
3. Transversely stroke the scar with your thumbs back and forth and up and down to mobilize the tissue in each direction. If it is on a limb, you can use your hands to "wring" the tissue back and forth.
4. Follow this mobilization by effleuraging the area again towards the heart to move the blood through. You can alternately stroke the tissue in a transverse fashion, followed by effleurage towards the heart a few times.
5. Mobilize the area. You can do this by walking or gently stretching. If the scar is not in a limb, but maybe a compression scar in the rib cage, you can perform "carrot" stretches by inviting the horse to bend away from the scar. This mobilization will remind the brain to re-incorporate this area back into the chain of movement.

About the Author

Visit http://www.equinemassageschool.com. Kathy Duncan is the author of The Fit Horse Companion, a manual for horse health and fitness including massage therapy and hydrotherapy.

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