How to Massage Your Dog's Shoulders

Hi, this is Patty Bianca and I am here with Whisky, showing you how to massage your dog. In this segment were going to work on the shoulder area. First were going to start of by going in the groove right in front of the shoulder. Were simply going to palpate that groove, and you will feel right in front of that shoulder bend, and you can see with Whiskys marking, its marked very clearly. Youre going to palpate up using either your fingers or your thumb, whichever is easy. Once light, down light, up moderate, down light, and up heavy, and when the heavy press, youre going to treat with the direct pressure, light for ten, moderate for 15 and heavy for 20. This time you wont be using the cross fiber friction. When you get to the top just gently brush your hand down. You want to try to keep your hands on your dog at all time to reassure her during the massage. Then were going to move up to the top of the shoulder area or the withers, and youre going to locate the spine area. Now, this is a slightly different move. Youre going to take your fingers like so, and put them on the opposite side of the spine where youre working, and just gently rock them back and forth. So, down light, up light, down moderate, up moderate, and down heavy and up heavy. This area were going to warm up good, because its a point of a great deal of tension, along with the neck. We will then take our hands and do percussion, but because this is a thin area that were working in, were going to make it almost like a chopping motion by holding our hand like this. So, youre going to percuss light, moderate, and heavy. This treats the trapezius muscle, which is located all up in here. Youre then going to go in, again, in the area between the spine and the shoulder blade or scapula, and give it some compressions; light and back, moderate and back, and heavy and back. Now that youve got it nice and warmed up youre going to take and use these zigzagging motion to locate any spasms, but were going to go in at a heavy pressure, and just little tiny zigzags, looking for not so reactive areas, and doing the direct pressure. Here we will use the cross fiber friction too. So, we finish that of with cross fiber friction. When were done locating all the spasms in that area, and typically theyre one or two, then we will go and give it some heavy compressions, up and down, and that treats that area. Now we can move down to the shoulder area, right in here, which will treat the deltoids and the triceps. We will start off with some -- Im going to, for purposes of this video, you can either use an open hand or you can use a back hand, because Im standing behind her, for demonstration purposes, Im going to use a back hand. Were going to give her some light back hand compressions; light down, and moderate down and up, and heavy down and up. Now, we will go down the triceps; light, moderate, heavy. Lets go down both of them to balance the area, heavy. Now, there is a groove in between these two muscle groups, and youre going to give that -- open that up; light, moderate, heavy. Now that its opened up, we can work on it and locate those spasms by palpating up light and down light, up moderate, down light, and up heavy. Then we can find those spasms on the heavy pass, treat it with direct pressure, each spasm gets treated. When we reach the top of that groove, we will close it off with heavy compressions, and then we will go back and close each side for balance with heavy compressions. This has been how to massage your dogs shoulder area. In our next segment were going to work on the dogs front of the chest.