Alaskan Husky Behavior Forum

my roommate has a lovely five year old german/malamute/wolf mix bred by a sled dog team up north. the mushers were giving away the pups so she never was used for mushing that i know of, and her owner used to take her out on hikes. she has a really bad right knee problem and her owner can't afford to get surgery so he keeps her inside. i was wondering if there is any physical therapy, acupuncture, massage, etc that would help her get back on her feet.

Hey HB, Has the styfle been examined by a vet? It's good to know exactly what the problem is.

Chris

HB, you probably have a different roomate by now...but I'm reading a very kool book and thought you might could recommend it to your roomate, or perhaps just enjoy reading it yourself! It's called: Love, Miracles, and Animal Healing and it's by Allen M. Schoen, DVM and Pam Proctor.

Dr. Schoen does animal acupuncture and his response would likely be that YES! acupuncture could help your roomates dog's knee problem.

I fractured a couple of vertebae in the last race of the season and I'm still not back to "normal" (but seeing as how my first spinal injury was almost 30 years ago, my "normal" isn't all that impressive either!) In fact, in reading this book I've decided that I really should get Ice and Marten in to Dr. Olson for some acupuncture. And maybe she could help Roscoe with his reverse sneezing and snarfling...and while I'm at it, I'm going to make an appointment for ME to get some acupuncture. It helped me tremendously pre- and post-op for my breast cancer surgery. I stopped going because I had trouble remembering the appointments and they changed my work schedule around so much that I ended up paying for appointments I never went to! My "solution" was to just be an "on-call" patient and rush in when they had a cancellation or a no-show...but that doesn't happen very often.

I'm pretty convinced that life requires rehabilitation! And there are plenty of great tools available to all of us if we're willing to look and try.