Canine sports massage is the therapeutic application of hands-on manipulation of the skeletal muscle and soft tissue, for the purpose of increasing circulation, relieving tension, enhancing muscle tone, reducing muscle spasms, promoting healing, and increasing range of motion in all dog ages and breeds.
Agility, disc, and athletics
Just as human athletes experience muscle soreness, stiffness, fatigue, and pain associated with training and exercise, our canine partners do so as well. These common restrictions lead to reduced athletic performance and predispose an athlete to injury.
Massage targets these issues by:
- Increasing the pliability and flexibility of soft tissue, allowing for greater range of motion, therefore increasing the capacity for an enhanced athletic ability
- Maintaining joint health
- Removal of trigger points
- Correcting soft tissue imbalances
- Encouraging proper anatomical alignment of joints throughout the body
- Prevention of injury
- Promoting strength. speed, and agility through myofascial and deep tissue manipulation.
Injury and surgery rehabilitation
Massage helps to speed the body’s healing process, shortening the time required for soft tissue injury rehabilitation. Massage will provide a significant improvement in the quality of healing seen after common injuries or surgeries such as strain, sprain or torn muscles, tendons or ligaments; post-op hip replacement; chronic lameness and post-trauma. For any injury, massage therapy also provides valuable supportive therapy for the physical compensation that will occur as a result of the injury.
Massage is vital to injury/surgery rehabilitation by providing the following benefits, among many others:
- Increasing circulation to damaged tissues
- Reducing inflammation, edema, and waste accumulation
- Addressing compensatory imbalance
- Improving the pliability of scar tissue
- Preventing adhesion formation Senior citizens
If you haven’t considered massage as an alternative and cooperative therapy for your aging dog, it’s time to take a closer look. Canine massage offers physical and mental benefits. Like you, your dog’s behavior and emotional state are directly influenced by how s/he feels physically. As a result of aging, the body’s natural functions slow and become inhibited. Massage is a highly valuable, and non-invasive tool with benefits such as decreasing the atrophy of muscle tissue and relieving the pain and discomfort of aching joints and muscles in senior dogs.
Massage works to:
- Reduce arthritis pain by increasing joint ROM
- Increase circulation to peripheral tissues
- Increase cell metabolism
- Remove waste products (via stimulation of lymphatic system) that build up within the tissue, causing inflammation and pain.
- Reduce pain caused by muscle hypertension, trigger points, and myofascial restriction
Large breed maintenance
Large breed dogs such as Mastiffs, Great Danes, Bernese, and Newfoundlands (to name a few) can easily melt their way into our hearts with their gentle-giant character, and larger-than-life appearances. Unfortunately, their size also predisposes them to certain health risks, such as arthritis, hip dysplasia, wobblers syndrome, hypothyroidism, and cruciate ligament damage.
Providing your dog with regular bodywork maintenance in the form of massage therapy, chiropractic, and acupuncture plays a crucial role in delaying and preventing the development of many of these common and debilitating issues, as well as reduces pain and inflammation in cases that are already experiencing these health problems.
