How Complementary Therapies Can Help Animal Arthritis

Osteoarthritis is an ailment that not only affects people, but our animals, large or small too. There's many natural and holistic ways to help manage this condition. Either alongside or instead of conventional medicine. (Depending on the severity of the symptoms).

In this post get tips on caring for your animals who have arthritis.

What Causes Arthritis?

Osteoarthritis commonly occurs when animals (or people) get older. As a result of 'wear and tear' on the joints through a lifetime of exercise and movement. However, it can also occur in younger animals - often as a result of trauma, such as from an accident of some kind.

Many symptoms of arthritis are similar to that of other ailments. So it's important to get a proper veterinary diagnosis to ensure that it's arthritis. And not something else.

So What Complementary Therapies Can Help Your Animal's Arthritis?

There's many therapies that can help our animals with arthritis, popular ones include:

• Physiotherapy
• Bowen Therapy
• Massage
• Hydrotherapy
• Aromatherapy (or zoopharmacognosy)

Also if your animal is struggling 'emotionally' or 'spiritually'. Then therapies such as Reiki, Bach Flower Remedies and Radionics do help promote calmness, relaxation and help reduce stress.

You may wonder why relaxation is important? Stress can cause an enhanced perception of pain and discomfort. Whilst being relaxed won't eliminate your animal's pain, it has got to be a good thing!

You can click on the therapies above to go to their advice pages here at Taranet, to learn more.

What Other Holistic Ways Are There To Help Animals With Arthritis?

• Think about your animals lifestyle. Is he or she getting enough exercise? Or the right type of exercise? Whether it's your horse, dog or other animal, consider what you're doing and what you should change.
• Does your animal need to wear a rug/blanket - or a different type of one (if they already use one)?
• Where does your animal eat his/her food? Does the 'feeding station'/bowl need to be higher or lower, or a different place to make it more accessible?
• Could your dog use some help to get in/out of the car? You could get a harness that helps provide support for either their rear end or front end (depending on where the issue is) or get a ramp.
• A top tip is that if you do get a harness to act as a gentle hoist, then you can use this at other times - not only for getting in / out of the car, but also for other times like getting up from your dog sleeping/laying down, etc.
• If your horse goes out/about in a horsebox, is the ramp too steep, would a different one be more helpful?

Read more about how holistic approaches can help benefit animals with arthritis in my advice page here.

Also check out the veterinary research on complementary animal therapies page here.

Listen to episode 12 of The Tara Podcast for a quick overview to helping animals with arthritis.

Find out more about dozens of natural animal therapies here at Taranet. Or read other articles in this Natural Pet Health Blog. Take a look at the sitemap here to explore how complementary therapies can help your animal!

About the Author

Suzanne Harris is founder of this Taranet website at www.taranet.co.uk, and also provides business coaching to horse and dog care and veterinary professionals.