Massage and other alternative therapies aren't only for people -- ailing animals increasingly are treated to such care

Thursday, August 12, 1999

CORVALLIS -- You don't want to rub an octopus the wrong way. But if you do, you'll know about it. First, it turns an angry red. Then it disappears in a cloud of ink.

Martha Jordan knows the power of the healing touch -- and has used it on both shy octopuses and tensed-up humans.

A licensed massage therapist in Everett, Wash., she has soothed the knotted muscles of nervous trumpeter swans, kinked-up kangaroos and camels, and even twitchy tarantulas.

Jordan is one of a growing number of workers in human health care who are clamoring for a slice of the $10 billion that Americans spend on pets each year. That's what brought her to Corvallis with 325 others for a five-day symposium at Oregon State University about meshing the practices of physical therapy and alternative medicine with veterinary medicine.

Veterinarians and physical therapists from as far away as Australia and Brazil converged on the school for the First International Symposium on Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy in Veterinary Medicine, sponsored by OSU's colleges of veterinary medicine and health and human performance. The session ended Wednesday.

Kathy Baumgardner, associate editor of DVM Newsmagazine, a Cleveland-based publication for veterinarians, said there is a growing movement in alternative therapies for animals, just as there is for people.

Acupuncture, acupressure, massage therapy and chiropractic treatments are winning an ever-bigger share of the animal care business.

"It's definitely a trend that's gaining ground," she said. "It's one that's gaining a bit more respect by the profession."

Baumgardner said a survey by her magazine shows that pet owners are willing to spend an average of $576 on veterinary bills before deciding to put their ailing animals to sleep.

So alternative practitioners say their methods make good economic -- as well as humane -- sense.

Which brings us back to the octopus.

A few years ago, Jordan, who holds a degree in wildlife biology from OSU, and her former husband, a marine biologist, captured octopuses for aquariums. The couple found that tense, angry octopuses didn't travel as well as calm, happy ones, and they tended to die along the way.

So Jordan began gently caressing the creatures, wafting currents of water around them in what she thought would be a relaxing way. Changes in the animals' color gave her hints about their state of mind. She noticed a substantial increase in the animals' survival rates, she said.

Although the benefits of many alternative and physical therapy procedures have not been scientifically measured, academic institutions are paying more and more attention to them.

David Levine, an associate professor in the department of physical therapy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is also an adjunct professor in the school's veterinary college.

"Veterinary medicine has evolved to where animals -- like people -- need follow-up therapy after surgery," he said.

Levine, a principal speaker at the symposium, uses his human-therapy skills to help so-called performance animals -- greyhounds, sled dogs, jumping horses and racehorses -- overcome their muscle strains, tendinitis and ligament sprains.

Animal athletes should receive the same consideration as their human counterparts, he said. After all, both have hard-working muscles, tendons and joints that go out of whack.

Allen M. Schoen, a veterinarian from Sherman, Conn., and a pioneer in the use of acupuncture on animals, said he hopes the symposium will stimulate research to determine which therapies work and which don't. Schoen, author of "Love, Miracles and Animal Healing" and editor of the textbook "Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine," said he hopes the session also will eventually bring consensus on what kind of training alternative practitioners should have to work on animals.

Schoen, a symposium speaker, said horror stories abound of practitioners called "equine adjusters" who use hammers, boards and tractors to beat, wrench and tug horses into shape.

Oregon law permits a variety of health care practitioners including physical therapists, massage therapists, chiropractors, naturopaths and acupuncturists to work on animals as long as they conform to the rules governing their practice and they receive permission from a licensed veterinarian.

But Lori Makinen, executive director of the Oregon Veterinary Medical Examining Board, the watchdog of veterinarians, said she suspects violations are numerous.

"A lot of people are out there working on animals without supervision," she said.

Just how many, nobody knows. But the board wants to find out. Makinen said one of the board's main goals during the next biennium is to find out what kinds of alternative therapies are available and to create standards of care for them.

On Tuesday, the symposium heard Kevin Haussler, a veterinarian at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, describe how to perform a chiropractic adjustment on a horse's spine.

The trick, he said, is to make sure the horse is relaxed and to take it one vertebra at a time.

"I can't adjust a horse," he said. "But I can adjust a single vertebral segment."

Copyright 1999, Oregon Live ®