Since 2005, Happy Hounds Massage owner Shelah Barr spends her workdays with ‘man’s best friend’. Barr makes a visit to your San Francisco home or you can bring your pet to Pet Food Express’ Market Street store for her services. Barr also works with cats, domestic rodents (hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils) as well as lizards.
Pet massage is much more than just petting an animal. Unlike humans, our pets can’t give one another a massage. Our pets also benefit from a positive, caring and nurturing human touch. They also suffer from stress, anxiety, pain, and tired sore muscles.
Barr provides a variety of styles and techniques depending on your pet’s needs. Each one is different. “I do structural and functional correction, injury and illness recovery, and chronic condition management. Because animals and humans are built, move, think, and act differently, the way I approach and treat a human body has to be different than the way I approach an animal,” says Barr, “I'm also very aware when I'm working with an animal that I can't justify to them what I'm doing the way I can with a human. Telling Spot to breathe and relax when I have my hands on a sore muscle doesn't translate effectively to him, so I use other ways to communicate my intentions.”
Some benefits of pet massage:
• Improved circulation, lymph and nervous system
• Promotes Bonding
• Speedy Recovery/Healing
• Increased quality of life
• Restores and maintains healthy activity levels
• Reduction of stress
• Calming
• Relieves Pain and Aches
• Overall well-being
The sedentary pet can lose full range of motion; develop respiratory problems that can cause heart and joint troubles due to inactivity and becoming overweight. Therefore, therapeutic massage can be beneficial in helping with movement and keeping muscles toned. The massage can also help in cases of chronic arthritis, hip dysplasia, as well as any other painful problem.
In addition to providing relaxation and good health to your pet, therapeutic massage can help ease pain from a surgery or other injuries. Like us, our pet can get strained, tight muscles that can keep them from full range of motion. From puppies to old age our pets romp around and can suffer from an injury. Since they can’t speak to us, we don’t know they are suffering.
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