01/01/2026
Yesterday at the end of my workday serving human patients, I realized that my 9-year-old Roxy really hadn't been out to visit anyone. I went to collect her off of her fuzzy doughnut bed, so we could go home, and scratched her neck to wake her up - and she yelped in pain.
If you've been a dog caretaker for long enough, you have had that gutwrenching moment of realizing something is not right with your dog  and you've got some decisions to make. Such as, should I take her to veterinary urgent care at 6:30 PM on New Year's Eve, or is this something I can handle myself? 
Assessing an animal's condition when they can't tell you what's wrong is something I've spent a good bit of time learning, first as a dog mom and now as an animal chiropractor. Labs will typically hide pain until it is pretty severe, so you can guarantee that her yelping meant there was a bona fide problem. But where, what, and why? 
As for the "why," we had had really nice playtime earlier in the icy snow, and so I wondered whether she might've injured herself playing rough with her little brother (as labs will do, haha) so my first (rational) thought was to assume this is a structural issue and approach from that perspective and see what happens. Although I was super concerned and really worried, I had to think to myself, if it is "shaped like a horse, and it has black and white stripes, it's most likely to be a zebra," although yes, could also be a rhinoceros?...... but that it's best to stick to Occam's razor (ie, the most straightforward and simple explanation is probably the right one) first. 
I encouraged her to get up and walk around and thankfully she was able to, although she certainly looked stiff, her head was down (that's a sign of discomfort for sure) and she wasn't quite putting a lot of of weight onto her front right shoulder. I had her stand on all fours and ran my fingertips along her spine and arms and legs to look for areas of heat, suggesting inflammation - sure enough, there was a hotspot in her mid back. When I felt along her shoulder, I noticed it was trembling. I then used a cookie to bring her through neck spine range of motion and found that she was able to turn her head to the left just fine, and look up with what appeared to be a little bit of discomfort, but that she would not turn her head to the right. 
Again, thinking of Occam's razor, I decided to give her gentle adjustments to her mid back, her lower neck, and her shoulder. Now, if you have seen those horrible videos of the dude in Germany manipulating big dogs (by the way, he's not even a trained or licensed chiropractor, but we won't even talk about that), you'll have to understand that actual Chiropractic care for animals is much more gentle and very specific. Actually, most folks are surprised at how gentle Chiropractic care is for animals, particularly if they have seen those horrible videos! Of course, the same could be sent for videos featuring human gross spinal manipulation as compared to actual chiropractic adjustment as well...... but I digress. The adjustment for animals typically does not yield a popping noise as it does with humans, by the way. Instead, to assess whether you have adjusted and corrected vertebral subluxation, you look for indicators and test these before and after the adjustment. So in Roxy's case, the indicators were the hotspot over her spine, which by motion palpation was tender and not moving very well, as well as the shaking in her shoulder, and refusal to turn her head to the right - each of which normalized after the gentle adjustment that I gave her.

After her adjustment, we did some walking around the office, just to make sure that that shoulder trembling did not come back, and then headed out for the night. At this point, she seemed a lot more comfortable, and so I decided that we were not going to need to go to urgent care for this immediately, that a wait-and-see approach seemed pretty appropriate. 
Sure enough, when we went over to my friends' house, she had no problem going up or down the stairs and was certainly being very social with tailwagging! She ate her dinner just fine and settled in for a nap.
Today we just have a little bit of residual hesitancy turning to the right, but her shoulder is not shaking it all, she's walking normally without a limp, and the hotspot in her midback is gone. 
Could I have gone to urgent care? Of course. I'm sure a vet could've given her some pain meds, if she had continued to be uncomfortable as she was earlier. But it's important to remember that a structural problem will not be solved by a chemical intervention (a drug that masks the pain); a structural problem requires a structural solution, otherwise known as corrective adjustment. This has been my working paradigm for the past nearly 20 years as an human chiropractor, and the same place to our four -legged babies. 
Coincidentally, we have her regular wellness yearly check up with her vet next week pre-scheduled anyways so I will have Dr. Jill at Hollis Vet check her over to make sure that everything is OK from the veterinary perspective.
So I guess last night the universe wanted me to test my problem-solving skills, one more time, to close out 2025..........
What possibility does this story bring up for your four-legged furbaby in the new year? Maybe it's time to see if a different approach can yield different results. 
and I'll update everybody about Roxy (who is napping comfortably on my feet right now) in the coming days. My gut instinct is that this was a "zebra," and that she'll be just fine 😊 i'm so glad to have the exact skill set that she needed. Yesterday I was a great reminder of why I chose the path that I did.
Contact me by email (path.of.life.chiropractic@gmail.com)and let's start a conversation about what's possible for your canine or feline fur-baby with animal chiropractic care 💕🐾
And happy new year, everyone! 🎉
