Most people know what chiropractors do for humans, mainly for those who have back and joint issues. But did you know that chiropractors can also provide treatments for dogs, cats, horses, and other animals? Mike Switzer interviews Dr. Carolyn Longacre, owner of Evergreen Chiropractic and Wellness in Greenville, South Carolina.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to another edition of the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. Most people know what chiropractors do for humans, for example, those who have back and joint issues. But did you know that chiropractors can also provide treatments for dogs, cats, horses and other animals? Dr. Carolyn Longacre is owner of Evergreen Chiropractic and Wellness, and she joins us by phone now from her office in Greenville, South Carolina. Carolyn, welcome to the program.
Longacre: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Switzer: Now, first of all, how difficult was it to move into animal chiropractic?
Longacre: The adjustment of animals is not hard. The training to balance a family. I have two young kids and operate a practice with staff and schedules. I had three labs I had to do in Texas, so kind of coordinating around my schedule for my human patients. Going to Texas and getting trained, that was the challenge. And it had a different language to it versus what I was accustomed to in human chiropractic. Learning how to work with veterinarians and working with anybody in the animal industries was a different vernacular than I had been used to for the last, like, you know, 13 years. And having patients get used to having animals come in the practice.
Switzer: So I was going to say, yeah. Do you bring the animals into your facility that you treat humans or do you visit? You visit the veterinarian's office also and treat them?
Longacre: So, you have that option to do that. And some of my colleagues do that. We do not. Right now, they just refer us to our office. So they come in with our human patients. I have a different entrance if needed.
Switzer: And so do you have special equipment for the animals like you do for humans?
Longacre: It's not as complicated for animals as it is for people. So you have fancier tables, drop tables, activators, massagers, all those things for human practices. But for animals, I have a bale, which is a high density Styrofoam that I use for my small animals and dogs and some cats. And most of the time I use those bales if I'm going outside to stand on. Because you actually can hold the weight of yourself to get high enough to work on like a, a cow or a horse.
Switzer: And I imagine you don't bring cows and horses into your office.
Longacre: It's not really easy. No.
Switzer: All right, so tell us, maybe share a real world example of, let's say everybody probably can relate to having a dog that needs, I guess, how would a person know a dog needs an adjustment and how does that need arise?
Longacre: What do you do a lot of times with the dogs that I see, they can't walk. They come become paralyzed. They don't feel the back legs. So there are times that I see them come literally dragging in. That's like, most, probably the most common thing outside of anxiety, actually. But a lot of times those paralyzed dogs have a lot of neck issues. And when we do these evaluations and adjust them, they do get better over time. But recently had a lady come in, she thought that she was going to have to put her dog down, because that's the reality. If they can't walk or they can't go to the bathroom outside and they end up going inside, that's kind of the, determining factors about whether they live or not, unfortunately. And over just two weeks, the dog started walking again. I have another one that she's 13. She went down, chased a bunch of geese down the stairs and hurt herself. She, did the whole medicine route like they typically do when they go into the vet office. And sometimes that makes it better, sometimes it doesn't. And then in this case, it really didn't for her. And so they referred her over to me. We did a whole big changeover. Her food needed to change because she wasn't healing from it. And we needed to cut her nails because the nails can affect so much of how the spine in the nervous system work because they're on their feet all the time. Over the course of several weeks, she got better. She got up to walk. She walks. She's gotten a lot better with her gut and her skin. Her hair grew back. I mean, this was pretty much a case of, like, everything kind of fell apart just because she had an injury. And this is pretty common with dogs because they either know, like, standstill to running and they don't know in between. So they are not taking it gracefully.
Switzer: Yeah, I can attest to witnessing some of that for sure, with our dog. Well, Carolyn, thank you so much for spending time with us.
Longacre: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Switzer: Dr. Carolyn Longacre is owner of Evergreen Chiropractic and Wellness in Greenville, South Carolina. And we will have a link to her business posted at our web page so you can learn more South Carolina Public Radio.org or you can hear this show again. And remember, you can hear us again wherever you find Podcasts with South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer.
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