Myth #7: I canʼt tell that my animal is feeling or moving any better, so the massage must not have worked.

There are many reasons that the benefits of

a massage may not be obvious right away.

For example, there may be some

inflammation from an injury or arthritis

causing pain that is still affecting how your

animal moves, even if many benefits were

accomplished. Most pain or movement

issues that we or our animals may want

help with have happened over a number of

days, months and often years. It would be a

lot to expect one or two massages to “fix”

it, although this can happen sometimes.

More often, you should expect noticeable

progress to take two or three massages, or

more, as well as other forms of treatment

such as chiropratic, acupuncture, or medication. Other treatments are often

complementary to massage, and vice versa.

Taking action towards preventing a recurrence of the problem is also

important. This could mean any number of things, such as changing

something about an activity that is causing repetitive stress injuries,

changing nutrition and/or weight, or providing regular maintenance

bodywork to alleviate the stresses that inevitably do accumulate.

Copyright © 2010 All About Animal Massage

7

Of course, if you're not noticing positive effects after two or three sessions,

massage, or that particular style of massage at least, may not be the (only)

solution for your animal's current needs. Meanwhile, you should certainly be

consulting with you veterinarian if there are acute problems such as

lameness, injury or illness.

Myth #8: If “location x” is where it hurts, then thatʼs where you must focus the massage to help.

There are two reasons that massage

attention in other areas of the body may

be more helpful than where it hurts at the

moment.

1. If there is current inflammation and

acute pain in an area, many massage

techniques would simply irritate the area

further and be counterproductive, or even

outright harmful. (However, some

techniques, such as lymphatic drainage

massage or acupressure, may still be

quite helpful!)

2. Very often the location of pain is not the location of the restriction that is

causing the pain. That is, a tightness or an adhesion, some form of a

restriction somewhere else in the body, may be (and likely is) pulling on

"neighbors", resulting in pain where sensitive structures are being stressed

by the pull. Over time, the patterns of tension, along with the body's efforts

to compensate, can create very elaborate and unique patterns of restriction.

This means that any pain could potentially have it's root cause virtually

anywhere in the body, and part of the process of receiving bodywork over

time is unraveling these layers that eventually led to the symptoms. (Why

don't the symptoms just appear right away? Because we and our animals, are

so good at compensating and adapting. Much more on this in Chapter 4:

Adaptation vs. Healing in The Dog Lover's Guide to Massage and The Horse

Lover's Guide to Massage.)