TulsaPets Magazine March 2021

March/April 2021 • TulsaPets 9 doctor of human physical therapy in Oklahoma to also attain full veterinary credentials.  “A lot of people will call us saying, ‘I want to put my dog on the water treadmill,’ and they’ll make the assumption that that’s all we can do,” says Owen. But Animal Acupuncture offers an impressive array of rehab technology and unique practices, including two underwater treadmills, shockwave technology, photobiomodulation (laser) therapy, electrical stimulation systems, therapeutic ultrasounds and advanced musculo- skeletal training. They are able to treat a wide variety of injuries or ailments for a wide variety of animals from dogs to eagles (yes, eagles!).  However, nothing is quite as important as their Pain Trace technology. “Pain Trace is an objective analysis tool that measures the dog’s ability to perceive pain,” she says. When faced with an injured animal, an owner or a vet is all too often left guessing. Owen’s pain tracing technology can not only objectively measure the pain response in the brain of the animal, but it can also put the results on a graph. “In effect, we’re giving a voice to the voice- less,” she says. Sounds a little sci-fi, right? I asked Owen to give me an example. “A little dog came in who was screaming out in pain,” she says. “She couldn’t stand up, couldn’t void her bladder or her bowels, and mom was at her wit’s end. “Nothing was showing up on X-rays, nothing was showing up on ultrasounds, and her lab work was normal. So all the conventional things that let us say ‘this is what’s wrong with your pet’ just didn’t tell this owner what was wrong with hers. “We put the Pain Trace on this little dog, and within two seconds, we found pain at the level of the hip extension. When we went to evaluate the dog, we further found that she didn’t just have pain on one side. She had pain on both sides equally. That allowed us to then evaluate her back.” Despite no classical method providing any indication of a problem, Owen was able to identify that the causal problem was in the little dog’s back. “The first stage was to get her out of pain, so we placed acupuncture needles and repeated the Pain Trace,” Owen says. After completing the Pain Trace, they didn’t find the pain had been reduced; they found the pain had been eliminated. While they had made progress that no one else could, Owen was not yet satisfied. “We wanted to see if it was going to hold,” she says. “Just like us, when we go to a chiropractor, an acupuncturist or a physical therapist, sometimes the pain relief just doesn’t hold.” They’d given voice to the voiceless but needed to know if they’d solved the problem. While Owen can know that the dog is in pain, she still didn’t know what actions the dog may have taken to injure herself in the first place. If the pet had been immediately discharged after eliminating the pain, “the pet would have done whatever she did before she got hurt because she wouldn’t have body awareness to not hurt herself again. We taught her where her back pain was and gave her the ability to extend her hips and to move her spine.”  Owen likens this to “yoga for dogs.” They trained her on how to flex her spine and how to support her hind legs. They changed—possibly saved—her life. “Now, she is running and jumping up and down on furniture, as active as a little dog can be. She has control of her bladder, control of her bowels. No accidents in the house and no more screaming.” All I could say was “wow!” Inside of that “wow” was great happiness. ... and grief. While I sit here typing, my adorable Aussie mix is rolling onto her back, tongue lolling out. I’m overjoyed to know that chronic pain leading to euthanasia isn’t necessarily carved into her future. Simultaneously, I’m thinking of my child- hood English Springer Spaniel who, in his latter years, had severe pain in his hips. When he uncharacteristically bit my dad, it was not in anger but in unvoiced pain. I would have done anything to help him, and if animal acupunc- ture had been available, maybe I could have. My dog looks great in her hip sunglasses and sharp sweater, but when I look out at an array of interesting, fun novelty pet products, I realize that pet acupuncture is not a novelty. It is a se- rious, possibly life-changing, medical treatment available to any animal. Whether you have an animal athlete striving for greatness or a lazy old house cat with hip pain, animal acupuncture may be vital to your pet’s quality of life. Kaleigh Alexander, Heather Owen, Crista Sage, Lindsey Warner, MorganWolf One of the underwater treadmills.