MUSCULAR HEALTH CHECK
About your dog’s ‘Muscular Health Check’
- I use the art of Advanced Palpation, which is an examination of your dog’s muscles underneath the skin surface using my hands and fingers.
- I use a developed sense of touch to search for deviations of the muscles natural tone, temperature, texture and tenderness; commonly called 4 T’s.
- I will check 40 different pairs of muscles. This is only superficial check. In practice I work on many more muscles. A full massage treatment is much more comprehensive and covers more muscle groups.
I ‘m looking for things such as:
Strains
A tear to the muscle caused by overstretching. Strains can be debilitating depending on how much of the muscle is affected. A strain can be REPETITIVE (caused by something your dog does time and time again) or ACUTE (a result of a direct injury/sudden trauma).
Trigger Points
Hyperirritable bands within the muscle, commonly called ‘knots’. These cause early onset muscular fatigue (i.e.: your dog is getting tired early in their walks/performance), reduced range of motion, can be painful to the touch, cause referred pain and ischemia (oxygen and nutrient depravation to the tissue) Look to see if you can spot what we call a ‘local twitch response’ which denotes the presence of a TrP.
Wide Radiating Myofascial Pain
Where a large area of fascia or connective tissue is affected causing chronic or ongoing day-to-day pain. Fascia is the riverbed of the body allowing for nerve pathways and it also wraps every muscle and organ individually and should allow for slide and glide. When it becomes tight we can liken it to a human wearing a pair of trousers 2 sizes too small.
On a superficial muscular check I do not assess for orthopaedic or neurological issues. Sometimes during a check such an issue may arise, and I will advise you to go to your vet for further investigation.
The muscular health check (palpation) is not a massage. For a Canine Massage, veterinary consent is required to comply with Veterinary laws 1966 and 2015.
