OVERTON — Thirty-year-old Skip has achy joints. Stiff knees. A sore back. Creaky hips.
As Skip’s acupuncturist brings out needles that soon will make contact with nerves sending pain messages to his brain, Skip watches expectantly. He’s looking forward to this.
You can tell because his ears are pointing forward.
Skip is a gelding that veterinarian John Lawton’s three children have used in their rodeo careers.
Although Skip still is running barrels, bending poles and chasing down goats, Lawton said the horse requires “a lot of TLC” at his advanced age.
That includes regular acupuncture and chiropractic sessions at Overton Veterinary Services.
Lawton has performed the alternative medicine for about a year on horses, cattle and dogs. It’s one factor leading clinic owners to expand its space with a 3,000-square-foot addition opening in May.
“That’s been a big driver in the increase in our equine (business), just the demand for services,” Lawton said. “The concepts have been around for years and years, but there’s only a handful of vets in the state that are certified in both those areas.”
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He earned certification in animal chiropractic from Options for Animals in Wellsville, Kan. His certification in veterinary medical acupuncture came from CuraCore Integrative Medicine and Education Center, a Colorado program run by former Colorado State University professor Narda Robinson.
It took approximately six months for each certification.
Seeing results
Chiropractic and acupuncture treatments are used together on a range of conditions, Lawton said. They can be effective even for some gastrointestinal and reproductive problems.
Most often, though, the treatments are used on athletes. Animals used in shows and competitions benefit from treatments that help them move more easily, recover from soreness or lameness and simply feel better.
“There’s a large investment in these animals, and they want them to be pain-free and perform to the best of their abilities,” Lawton said.
One of his clients is Emily Johnson. The owner of Mountain Rose Ranch near Kearney has five of her own horses and boards 20-30 others.
Johnson’s boarders compete in barrel racing, reining, natural horsemanship, trail, rodeo, English and western dressage, and jumping. Originally from Boulder, Colo., she said she’s used animal chiropractic and acupuncture treatments for decades.
One of her first steps when training is to assess a horse’s overall condition. That includes looking for any signs of pain.
Fixing that pain can make a difference for a horse and its owner.
Johnson recalled one young horse that wasn’t responding well in training. A chiropractic session revealed he was knotted up in his lumbar region.
The adjustment “changed this horse’s life,” Johnson said. “It made him a usable horse.” Without the treatment, he may have gained a reputation as difficult.
Overton veterinarian John Lawton uses a stimulator to send electrical current between acupuncture needles. The treatment is designed to alleviate animals’ pain by stimulating key nerves.
Needles first
As Lawton began placing purple-tipped needles in Skip, the horse barely seemed to notice. Lawton explained there are hundreds of spots on a horse’s body where needles could go; he places them based on the conditions he knows Skip has.
“We’re picking nerves and asking them to calm down, and that eliminates the pain response,” Lawton added.
Once the needles were in, Lawton fired up a small device and connected its wires to the purple spikes sticking out of Skip’s skin. His muscles responded as an electric current hit them, first pulsing, then shuddering. Then relaxing.
“You can see a change almost instantaneously in their behavior, their movement, their attitudes. They will tell you how they feel if you know how to listen to them,” Lawton said.
He began taking his own horses for treatment by a veterinarian in Gothenburg about three years ago to maintain and improve their rodeo performance. Lawton’s family competes in 40-50 rodeos each season.
“These horses become finely tuned athletes, and they get the same aches, pains, sorenesses as people do. And when you’re looking at differentiating first, second and third place by thousandths of a second, any opportunity we have to make those horses perform better or feel better, people are asking for these services, and I was no different. How do you get your horse to perform even just one step better, half a step better, feel that much better?
“And that’s where the chiropractic and the acupuncture have come in to allow them to perform to the best of their abilities, and be pain-free doing it,” Lawton said.
After acupuncture, Skip was quieter. Not perfectly still, but noticeably looser.
Skip, a 30-year-old gelding, seems to enjoy a chiropractic session with veterinarian John Lawton. Lawton’s recent certification in animal chiropractic and veterinary medical acupuncture is a factor in the decision to expand the Overton Veterinary Services building.
Treatment mix
Then it was time for an adjustment.
Lawton began on Skip’s back by moving the heel of his hand onto each vertebrae in turn. Basically, he moved each of Skip’s joints in the proper form while checking for any resistance and misalignment.
While acupuncture and chiropractic care have been well-known in rodeo and performance circles for a long time, they’ve grown more common recently in animal care.
“There’s people who believe in it and people who don’t, and a lot of it is just education,” Lawton said, adding that he sees acupuncture and chiropractic as another treatment option and a part of overall veterinary care.
Traditional veterinary medicine, chiropractic care and acupuncture approach problems from different perspectives, Lawton said. “You mesh all three of those together, and it becomes a powerful tool to make those animals feel as well as they can.”