Article on Stress in Animals
Posted by lisa on Oct 24, 2008
The LiveScience blog has a good article by Clara Moskowitz, on how stress affects animals. In addition to all the stressors of their normals lives in the wild or in captivity, they can pick up the stress of the humans they live with. Stress has both positive and negative physiological effects in animals, and inspires a desire for comfort food! From the article
In both humans and animals, stress causes the body to release adrenaline and cortisol hormones. These chemicals cause heart rate and respiration to speed up, and suppress the immune system. Stress also clamps down on the reproductive system, reducing libido and reproductive hormones, which ultimately increases the risk for cardiovascular disease.
All these all-too-human effects have also been measured in animals.
Wilson’s subordinate rhesus monkeys, for example, have disrupted reproductive cycles, are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease than dominant females, and seem to show up with higher rates of infection and illness.
“Stress is adaptive to a certain degree, but after a while it’s really maladaptive,” Wilson said. “One of the first things to be affected is the reproductive system. Yeah, it makes some evolutionary sense that you don’t want to reproduce if you’re in danger. But when your reproductive system shuts down, you have all these secondary effects, like increased cardiovascular disease risk, which are really maladaptive.”
Read the whole article here, and remember that massage triggers the relaxation response in humans and animals.
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Massage Event at WetnoZe
Posted by lisa on Oct 19, 2008
I traveled to Quincy, MA this weekend for a massage event at WetnoZe Pet Concierge on W. Elm St. What a cute place! They specialize in small dogs, so I was coated in Shih-tzus and Cavaliers at all times. The dogs really seem to love it there.
There is a nice pic of the event on their blog.
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Save A Dog Shelter Contest update
Posted by lisa on Oct 9, 2008
Thank you! Save A Dog is now 99th in the nation, 3rd in the state! I heard, but don’t know for sure, that there is a prize for keeping the #1 in the state position for a week. See yesterday’s post for how to help by voting for Save A Dog.
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Shelter Challenge for Save A Dog
Posted by lisa on Oct 8, 2008
I’d like to ask for a little help. For my massage internship I worked with the Save A Dog rescue, massaging their dogs that were in isolation before adoption. I’m very grateful to them for the opportunity, and I’m glad I could help the pups sleep better at night in the kennel. I still volunteer with them because they are such a good group, and a really well-run rescue.
The Animal Rescue site is having a vote for your favorite shelter challenge. Grand Prize is $25,000, which would be a great help in finishing off their new shelter they are building right now. Save A Dog is currently ranked 158th nationally, 5th in MA. Please vote for them.
All you do is go here, put “Save A Dog” in the shelter name (optional), “MA” for the state, and “Framingham” for the town. Then click vote when it takes you to the new screen. I thank you!
The Animal Rescue site is a great place to visit every day and click for free food for shelter animals. They also have cute stuff for gifts, and each purchase helps the animals.
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Wake Up Call
Posted by lisa on Oct 5, 2008
One of my wonderful commenters just reminded me I hadn’t posted in an age. Everything is good; I was just overwhelmed with working full time, finishing school and my internship, and doing my case study. And this Monday, I graduated! I’m now a Certified Small Animal Massage Therapist.
There is a writeup of my case study (the lovely Strider) in the words of his owner on my business site. I’ve been having a lot of luck lately with using massage and Reiki to help behavioral problems. I’ll write more on that later. Now that I’m done with school and am going to make a go of this business, I will be a more faithful blogger.
Thanks for reading!
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Reiki Party!
Posted by lisa on Aug 29, 2008
I give a discount for dog/owner Reiki sessions, and some of my dog owners decided to team up and get Reiki for themselves and their dogs all in one night. I’d never given Reiki for hours straight, but figured it was worth a try as long as I could take a break for food now and again. Reiki isn’t supposed to drain you, since the energy you give is not from your personal store of energy, but I thought that just keeping mental focus for that long might be tiring. There were three dogs and four people, and we stopped for a nice dinner, so the whole night took about five hours.
I alternated humans and dogs to take it easy on my back. Even with my table set to the proper height, standing for an hour can be tough. Rolling around on the floor with pups is hard on the back in a different way, but the alternating helped. In case anyone is considering trying this, my energy level was fine at the end, but my hips were very sore the next few days. In massage school they taught us to mind our body mechanics and not strain ourselves helping the client. This is easier said than done, especially with dogs. When you finally get the dog settled and allowing you to do what your need to do, you’d to anything to avoid causing the dog to stand up. It’s tempting to just lean over a little farther in your current position than move and unsettle the dog.
I did find that after five hours of Reiki I was pretty electrified. I kept shaking my arms because they were very tingly. I also had trouble quieting myself for sleep, the opposite of being mentally drained.
I loved the pups, of course, but the people were also very interesting. One man was a bit of a skeptic but was willing to try. I do hands-on Reiki whenever possible, but when I did the position where I hold my hands over his eyes, I tried not to touch him. I thought that if I were in his position and thought the whole thing was a little weird, I wouldn’t want some strange lady to put her hands on my face. So, I only touched him if my hands shook. He said it was like having his face “massaged by clouds.” I thought that was very poetic.
Another client gave me my first experience with a healing reaction (sometimes called “crisis”). I always explain to my new clients that sometimes the condition I’m treating will get worse before it gets better as the body heals itself, and not to be overly alarmed. On the party night her foot was in pain and felt a little better after her first treatment. After I checked up with her this week, she said that it had in fact gotten much worse before getting much better. A feel a little bad contributing to someone’s pain, even in the service of healing, but she was fine with it since she knew it might be coming.
When I was attuned, the concept of learning more about Reiki on my own seemed a little strange. After all, an attunement is essentially something that is “done to” you, after which you can suddenly do this wonderful thing, with very little formal training. And being a scientist, I am used to formal training. I’m used to knowing why things work and how they look underneath. But the longer I do Reiki, the more nuances I pick up, the more confident I become in my skills, without anyone teaching me. All I have to do is pay very close attention to my senses. Which, I suppose, was part of my formal science training, though it feels very, very different.
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Tail Up!
Posted by lisa on Aug 20, 2008
Fergus had his first long walk in three weeks today. It was too cold for cicadas to sing, so the boys and I met their friend Sally at the conservation land and went for a long walk through the fields and a swim in the river. With no Mutt Muffs. He’s out of shape now, so I didn’t really throw the ball, just let him run with the other two dogs and swim. Fergus had his happy trot on display, and was so very happy. It did my heart good. When Fergus is happy he shares it with everyone around.
He’ll probably be sore tomorrow from all the exertion. Last time he overdid it he had a temporary limp. Luckily I know massage.
The Mutt Muffs have been a savior, but I’m very glad to set them aside now and then.
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This is ridiculous
Posted by lisa on Aug 10, 2008
This year in New England, I feel like I’m under siege by summer. My dog Fergus, is a nervous wreck. He’s lived five years without being afraid of thunderstorms, but this year, we’ve had one every other day . All summer. Sometimes every day.
He goes from room to room with every thunderclap, like he’s thinking, “Damn, it’s in this room, too, I’ll try the kitchen. Nope, here, too, I’ll try the bathtub.”
It may have something to do with his ear being extra sensitive. I say this only because he has another sudden-onset phobia: he won’t go outside. As soon as he goes out, his tail sneaks below his belly, his ears go down and he pulls like a sled dog to get back inside. Panic, is how one friend described it.
This is the dog that never smiles in the house… he’s only happy outside. Now I can’t get him to go out to go potty. It was John that figured it out. He got Fergus into the backyard, and he was okay at first. Then he’d dive under a table and tremble. He’d come out for awhile, then dive under and tremble. John linked it to the off-and-on singing of the cicadas. You know, these guys:
They make an infernal racket sounding like this:
Cidaca M. cassini making my life hard
I remember last year it bugged him, but not like this. Meanwhile, I can only get my dog to do his business when it rains (provided there is no thunder), or in the early morning before they start singing. Reiki, massage, T-touch help a bit with the thunder fear but not with the cicadas. I began to think it may have more to do with ear pain than fear.
In the end, it came to this: aviation ear muffs for my dog. I ordered a pair of Mutt Muffs for Fergus. The other dogs make fun of him, but now he will go outside.
His tail stays up; he has a happy trot. He does his business. I can’t let him run off leash, because he can’t hear my call. Still, a thousand times better. I was starting to worry about his kidneys.
I use them, too, during thunderstorms (on Fergus. They’re too small for me.). Some dogs hate more than the noise; they sense the pressure changes or the static in the air. Ferg seems to only react to the noise so far, so I thought it was worth a try. It helps, a little. The quieter claps he can’t hear at all (no jump in his muscles); the louder ones must sound not so loud. He’ll lay in bed with me until the really big ones come. I would take a picture of him in his Mutt Muffs for you, but this storm is pretty bad. Fergus is in the closet. Sigh.
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Massaging at SmartPak Bark Fest
Posted by lisa on Jul 20, 2008
Our internship phase has started and we kicked it off at the SmartPak event this weekend. It’s a beautiful store for dog and horse lovers. They have a catalog business and a unique service of packaging dog/horse food, meds and supplements in daily packs for freshness and proper measurement.
Mary Francis and I manned the table on Saturday and massaged about 14 dogs between us and met a lot of interesting people and their pups. My favorite was a 15 year old bull terrier named Coco that would have laid still for me for hours. Below is Jack the spaniel, who is, in fact, sitting completely in my lap.
People were very receptive to a free massage for their dog and so were most of the pups. I used Reiki to calm a young Portuguese Water Dog named Lily that wanted to sneak away and bark at Tara, the eldery Scottie, who Mary Francis was working on.
People were mostly surprised at how well their dogs settled into it. I think that, aside from the relaxation of massage, that the feeling of trained hands on them is novel and stimulates their curiosity. It might just be worth hanging out for a minute to see where this unusual experience is heading.
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Brochure First Draft
Posted by lisa on Jul 20, 2008
For our business class at massage school we had to make a brochure. This is my first draft of a tri-fold. I used it at the SmartPak event where we massaged for our intership, so I had to make clear I’m not a certified animal massage therapist yet. I’ll actually send these to the printer when I have my credentials.
On the back side are listed a number of the benefits of massage. Click the image for a pdf.
Behavior
- Massage decreases stress through activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.
- Massage decreases the heart rate and blood pressure.
- Massage lowers physiological arousal and stress hormones. This not only lowers feelings of anxiety and depression, but also enhances the immune system.
- Massage increases serotonin levels, which have a positive effect on stress and depression, and may also reduce pain.
- Massage builds trust between you and your companion animal as you spend time together and learn to read her signals. Animals that believe their humans understand and want the best for them show decreased anxiety.
Free Movement
- Free range of motion and flexibility increases significantly following massage.
- Massage elongates and softens connective tissue.
- Massage decreases soreness and stiffness by increasing blood circulation, which brings more nutrients to the muscle and promotes rapid removal of waste products.
- Healthy and athletic dogs also benefit from massage, which reduces many postural distortions. Releasing trigger points and reducing muscle tension increases range of motion and balances the gait, resulting in increased performance and improved motor skills. Therefore, massage also helps in preventing injuries.
- Massage reduces pain, increasing comfort for injured, sick, or geriatric animals.
Accelerated Healing
- Massage increases circulation, both cardiovascular and lymphatic.
- Enhanced circulation to a fracture leads to increased deposition of new bone.
- Massage applied to healed wounds helps reduce excessive scar formation in the skin and soft tissue beneath.
- Massage reduces swelling by promoting lymph circulation.
- Massage helps to gently build tone in muscles weak from disuse or illness.
- A massage session by a trained practitioner can detect abnormalities earlier, allowing for accelerated veterinary treatment.
What do you think?
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