Osteopath

There are many different modalities for canine health care. Osteopathy is one of them. Here is the definition of what an osteopath is from one of the web sites that I will list at the bottom of this post: “Osteopathy is a system of evaluation and treatment of the musculo-skeletal system (the bones, joints, muscles, ligaments and connective tissue). It combines scientific knowledge of anatomy and physiology and clinical methods of investigation.” Basically, it’s a way of treating the dog for an injury or ailment while taking into consideration the entire dog.

I first heard about this through the canine massage therapist that we used for Heffner. As you may have picked up on by now, I’m a worrier by nature when it comes to my dogs. As I mentioned previously, prior to Heffner having his first visit with the rehab vet, I’ve been wanting to have his overall conformation evaluated by someone in the know for a while, just to make sure that I’m being as mindful as I can. He really hasn’t given me any reasons to doubt his abilities, I just get paranoid and his conformation isn’t as great as Bess’ is and I want to look out for his future. When I mentioned all of this to Ruby, she mentioned that seeing an osteopath might be the way to go. While I never did get around to taking him to see an osteopath, it was one of those moments that got me learning about something that I had never even heard of before.

While I have no personal experience with this branch of medicine, it does seem like a pretty cool idea. I thought it would just be something great to talk about in the blog and possibly give others who, like me, may have never heard of it before, a little something more to learn about.

Like I said, unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I don’t have any personal experience to speak of, but I did find a couple of web sites helpful for just reading and learning a little bit more. Here they are:

http://agilitynet.co.uk/health/osteopathy.html

http://www.hawkesburyosteopathy.com/default.html

In Rose City Classic news, we are having at least one dane finish at each show. Sometimes two! Today, a Laurado bitch handled by Katie Edwards not only finished, but finished by taking breed from the classes! And yes, that is pretty spectacular when you consider the fact that in order to do this she had to beat out several very nice specials. One of which is a Top 20 dog. The dog who took WD, BOW, and BOS also finished, from the 9-12 month puppy class. Today was a big finish for those guys. It was also a pretty long day. We've got so many danes entered that judging is averaging two hours to get all the way through breed. Oy! Bess behaved beautifully today, but for whatever reason didn't get much of a look. She's being handled by her breeder, Georgia, for this show and she's just able to bring so much more out of Bess. It's kind of nice to stand back and admire my own dog in the ring.:) Not that I'm done handling! Please believe, I'm definitely hooked!

I also fought the urge to be a slug after my nap yesterday and took Heffner for his second walk and Bess for a run. Which allowed to me really rack up the step count! I finished the day off with 25,091 steps! That's my highest so far! We'll see how I do today. I'm trying to figure everything out based on when I'm going to get around to eating dinner and what time I want to get to bed tonight. We've got another early morning tomorrow and since it's a weekend, it's going to be a hectic day. Weekends at Rose City see a whole heck of a lot of spectators. Which is great for the sport of purebred dogs, but it adds a whole lot of stress to those of us who are trying to move equipment around in addition to getting the dogs who are competing where they need to be. People who come just to watch tend to not realize how in the way they are until they're asked repeatedly to move. Space is tight as it is and it makes things a whole lot more interesting when you have a whole bunch of random people milling about to look at the purdy dogs. The show is so big that I kind of wish it was closed to spectators. I know that sounds horrible, but if everyone could fully understand the amount of time, effort and coordination that goes into showing these dogs and the limited space that we're given to do it in, I think they'd be more understanding. It's a heck of a lot easier for people to come and watch smaller scale shows and have room to mill about than it is at this show. I actually go so far now as to discourage people like my parents and husband from attending. Anyhow, I kind of went on a tangent there!