Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello. This is Dr Judy Morgan, and you're listening to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. My guest today has an amazing, amazing way with animals, and is doing some amazing work in the field of veterinary rehabilitation. Dr Michele Broadhurst is a chiropractic sports physician and acupuncturist who is certified in animal chiropractic and rehabilitation. She has been published several times, has written several books that focus on myofascial pain in animals, and teaches locally and internationally. She is the owner of Rehab for Pets and Animal Rehabilitation in Dallas, Texas. Michele, thank you so much for agreeing to be my guest today.
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 0:49
Thank you so much for having me
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:52
so you and I met or met virtually a few years ago, and at that point you were not in Dallas, and you were teaching rehab and chiropractic and myofascial release to a lot of veterinarians and also doing virtual consultations for clients. And I sent a client to do a virtual consultation for her dog, and she was just ecstatic. She sent me an email that just over the moon thanking me for all the help that you gave her. So I know that you you know what you're doing. You know what you're talking about. How did you get started in this whole field of animal chiropractic? you were a human chiropractic sports physician and acupuncturist. What? What made you say, Hey, I'm going to jump ship and figure out how to do this on the animals?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 1:44
Well, quite honestly, after a couple of years in practice, I got tired of just treating the same thing over and over. So even those with sports physician work, chiropractic sports physician work is quite diversified. It's rather challenging to treat athletes all the time because they don't listen and they're not compliant, and they always want to do stuff that you don't want them to do,
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:07
and they're not willing to take some downtime,
Dr. Michele Broadhurst
exactly, right?
Dr. Judy Morgan
But I have a competition this week,
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 2:15
yeah? Why can't I run with a like, grade three strain on my case? So yeah, I just, and I've always loved animals, and one of my, one of my patients at the time, was actually very big into the thoroughbred racing world. And so she said, Oh, why don't you start doing animal chiropractic? So I started looking into it. I went to options for animals in Kansas, and it kind of just snowballed from then and then we were in South Africa at the time, so I had a really, really big thoroughbred racing practice and a small animal practice and a human practice. So I worked 16 hours a day for six days a week, which is what you can do when you're in your 20s and your 30s and and it was wonderful, because I got to learn so much. I was surrounded by fantastic specialists and people who are at the top of their game. So my my learning curve was very, very quick and and very brutal, but I'm so grateful for it. So yeah, and that's how it all started. And then I went to the University of Tennessee, and I did my CCRP, which is the canine rehabilitation practitioner, and, you know, being an acupuncturist and using dry needling in humans, it was such a big part of my practice. And we in South Africa, you know, it kind of spilled over into the animals. So it was just such a privilege to be using it for the last 20 years. And so when we moved to America, I was like, I need to tell people about this, because it's such a phenomenal way of practicing. It's so quick. You can do so much effective work in such a short period of time. So I just really wanted people to understand the benefits of, well, firstly, the myofascial system and how important it is, because it's something in veterinary that we really haven't talked about up until very, very recently. And you know, if you look at the human medicine side, which I'm so grateful to have that background, if you look at the research, 80% of neuromusculoskeletal pain comes from a myofascial source. So that's true in people. I think that there's definitely a correlation to the animals, and it's something that we never really look at, particularly in large animal veterinary you know, we're always injecting joints, and if we can't inject a joint, we can't beat it, and we can't Dex it, and we can't do whatever we need to do, then we just don't do a lot with it. So in the small animal world, I feel like they're a little bit more progressive in that way, but we're still far, far away from really being competent at identifying myofascial pain as its own entity, or as a concomitant entity.
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:01
I think that's that's really true. And I know there are, Ed Bassingthwaighte, who's a veterinarian in Australia, talks a lot about myofascial pain and working for for that with with animals with pain, and I think we're starting to to see the tip of the iceberg. But I can guarantee you, it is not talked about in veterinary schools. It is not something that well, they generally don't talk about anything integrative or alternative anyway, so that's a bit of a problem. So when you talk about integrating, an integrative approach to veterinary rehabilitation. What kind of things go into that?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 5:47
Well, I think the biggest thing is creating a team. And this may be like a post surgical patient, this may be an aged animal. This might just be a French Bulldog who is genetically problematic,
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 6:03
problematic, challenging, all of those things. So, you know, we teach, we treat everything along that range. So I think the most important thing is making sure that you have a good team around you. So for example, for me, if I have a dog with quite significant spondylosis, I want them to have a neurologist on on their team, so that we can have those discussions as things progress, having a really good primary who is able to help with pain modification and other things, if necessary. So I think it's really about creating a whole team that hopefully have put their egos a little bit aside and so that we can really focus on the patient's needs and wants, because that's always the biggest challenge is like, it's not a game of who's right. It's about we all bring something to the table. So when we're looking from an integrated perspective, or rehab perspective, I think one of the things that we forget is, yes, the dog, let's say, has had a cruciate tear. He's had the surgery, but he's been walking poorly for a minimum of three months, because it takes 12 weeks for a CCL to repair. Well, the surgery to repair. So we have so many compensations with that that one of the things that happens is in 60% of these cases, because we've effectively changed the biomechanics of the one surgical leg, the other leg goes but my belief system is, yes, we've created a leg length discrepancy, but we also haven't treated the surgical leg from a myofascial perspective. So if we don't have the strength, if we don't have a change in gait, if we haven't managed that pain to a level that the dog can actually function optimally, then we're actually going to have many more problems down the line. So looking at them from a purely holistic perspective, and when I say holistic, I mean with a W like looking at them as a whole is really important. I'm very blessed in the fact that I have so many toys in my office, and I'm so grateful, but my hands are my biggest tools, so but we have shockwave machines. We have a new technology called EMTT that's coming in, which is just amazing for neurological patients. So we really have to just look at them have lots, lots of options in our box, and to tailor make a specific program for those animals so that they thrive in the shortest amount of time possible, for the longest time possible.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:35
Absolutely, that's one of the things that I that just became part of my vocabulary once I got into acupuncture and chiropractic and all the the integrative therapies, was just like, look, my toolbox just has a lot more tools in there now. And it is, it's, it's kind of fun to take each individual animal and make that individual protocol for them. Now, if somebody comes to you, for instance, with a dog that's had a CCL repair or has a partial tear and they don't want to go to surgery, does your protocol include giving them things to do at home in between visits to you?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 9:17
Yeah, you know, my I always say to clients, quite honestly, you know, if I could go to the gym once a week and have a six pack, that would be amazing, but it's never happened in my lifetime, so don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. So I am, I know, right. I always say to people, I sign up for that. I have a line out the door. The more that people do at home, the less they need me, because strength and conditioning is such a huge part of it, but and walking is not necessarily the only thing that animals need. So I generally give patient clients five, maybe five to eight minutes of exercises, normally three to four exercises max, because I know. I wouldn't do anymore because I don't have the time. So we kind of work on that. And then clients go home. They do that every day, and then the dog can come back, because we try to be very financially savvy too, you know, where we can try to save people some money by them doing a lot of the work at home, and then for the things that they can't do, and like revisiting exercises and protocols, they come back in, we retrain them with new exercises, and they go home and do that. So a lot of them is not very are not very highly intensive as far as equipment and things like that. And we MacGyver a lot of things that are general household goods that they can use. So yes, conditioning is a huge, huge part of what we do.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:48
So how important do you think rehab is? It used to be. I've been out of school for 40 years, so when I graduated from school, if they needed a orthopedic surgery. They got their orthopedic surgery, and that was it just, you know, okay, great, come back 10 days, get your sutures out, and you're done. How often are you seeing orthopedic veterinarians, surgical, you know, ones that are doing these surgical procedures? How often are you seeing these dogs and or cats getting referred for physical therapy? Is that now common place that that it goes, you know, in in human medicine, you get a hip replacement, you're immediately going to rehab. There it's, it's a given. Is it becoming that way in veterinary medicine? Are you seeing that?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 11:44
to a degree. So some of the specialty centers, the surgical centers here, have their own rehabs, so they get kind of funneled straight in there. What I am finding, though, which I'm so pleased about, is that owners are actually doing more research themselves. So for example, like I had a patient, a client yesterday, and the dog, I think, has created a full CCL tear, and the owners just come out of knee surgery so she understands better, like how important the post surgical rehabilitation is, and how painful it can be, and how much she has to work to get that full extension of her leg. And so I think people are really driving it more than colleagues, to be honest. And there's still a lot of people who believe that, you know, you do the surgery, dogs adapt, they'll be fine. Everything's cool, until it's not so. I think it's being driven a lot more from people asking good questions and doing their own research, then necessarily from within the community. And that's not, that's not a blanket statement. There are lots of people who do, and veterinarians who do refer, especially when they see the difference in pre and post and those that have and haven't, but if they haven't had exposure to that, then we don't necessarily have that contact with the practitioners to be able to show them the befores and afters, so to speak.
Dr. Judy Morgan 13:18
Yeah, absolutely, we need to take a break to hear from our sponsor. We'll be right back. You're listening to Dr Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets.
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Dr Judy Morgan 14:42
Welcome back. I'm Dr Judy Morgan, your host of the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. My guest today, Dr Michele Broadhurst owns Rehab for Pets an Animal Rehabilitation Center in Dallas, Texas, and she's been there for about a year and a half with that and I think this is. An amazing thing. I have a couple of veterinary friends who also own rehab centers, one in Michigan, one in Philadelphia, and they're busy all the time. Michele, how important do you think it is for so many people are discovering I maybe COVID, and being locked up at home with your dog all the time brought this about a little bit. But people are like, hey, you know, instead of having my dog lay around all day, I should do something with my dog. So we're seeing, I think, an explosion in people doing agility and nose work and barn hunt, lure coursing, all these crazy things that people are doing. I don't do any of that with my dogs. Mine are couch potatoes, but yeah, how important do you think it is for people who are doing that kind of work with their dogs to have them enrolled in some sort of exercise program, other than just, you know, jumping jumps and doing seesaws and whatever they do. How important is it that the those dogs undergo some sort of physical therapy for core strengthening, for whatever? I mean is, is it common for these dogs to blow out joints and ligaments doing these things? Do you see a lot of them?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 16:28
You know, it's very much like us, if we keep doing what we've always done, we always get what we eventually get what we've always got. So the biggest issue is that with lack of conditioning or over conditioning in certain areas, we start seeing repetitive strain injuries. So a repetitive strain injury can take a very long time to actually manifest, and by the time it's manifested, a lot of the time, they've either blown something out or the injury is relatively severe that it may require months of rest or surgery or something along those lines. So my advice to especially my sporting dogs, is, let's get you in every couple of months. Let's catch things before they become a problem, so that we can modify them with very little drama and absolute ease. And it may just take a little bit of tweaking, or some exercises we may need a couple of sessions with, like a shockwave treatment, or something along those lines, or laser or whatever it may be, but we catch it really quickly, so it never becomes a drama. The problem with a lot of these dogs is they go from being not significantly conditioned all the time, or they're conditioned in the same way. So for example, if the handler is always on one side, they're always looking in one direction, that's not going to hurt for the first 10 days, but you do that for 30 days in a row, or three months in a row, or three years in a row, that's going to develop into a dysfunction, which is ultimately going to result in issues. So I think it's really important we get a lot of show dogs as well, just because of their top lines and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, just making sure that they're the best versions of themselves that they can be. And again, you know, ensuring longevity in the sport. Because it devastates me to see four year old dogs who are at the top of their game now not being able to do anything because they've got an Achilles tendon rupture or medial shoulder instability or whatever it may be because of overuse and lack of conditioning. And you know, my favorite thing that always makes me to this day still giggle, is people are like, but he wants to do it. And I always say I want to drink wine and eat chocolate, but I can't do that either all day. So I think, you know, we have to also kind of lock into what our dogs should be doing and our animals should be doing versus what they can do, because they can do a lot, but should they be? Is really the question?
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:04
Yeah, yeah. I think that being really tuned in to the conditioning of the pet. I have a friend who has the top Cavalier King Charles Spaniel agility dogs in the country, and she, I think she has 10 or 12 dogs right now, and they are all at the top, and her 12 year olds are still running and winning. But she, I talked to her once about what kind of conditioning she does, and how often they train, and how hard they train, and the different things that she does with them, and she's really in tune to exactly what you're talking about, not doing the same thing over and over and over, making sure that she's doing that core conditioning with them, really strengthening different parts of the body. And I think it's pretty critical. But I actually, I feel like that just even. Our couch potatoes need some sort of check in with where they're showing strains and problems, like I have one. She absolutely cannot jump up on the furniture at all, which is kind of nice, except that I have to pick her up all the time because she wants to be on the furniture. But she has luxating patella, genetic problem, not bad enough to need surgery, but bad enough to keep her from jumping up. Now, if she was getting bodywork and strengthening and conditioning, it would help. I know that I'm not doing that, but I know that so I would say, for anybody who has a dog or even a cat. One of my cats blew an ACL, believe it or not, yep. And he actually did not go to surgery. It healed. He was back climbing and jumping and playing, and, you know, he was just, he spent 12 weeks sitting in a room not climbing and jumping, and then he's fine. So they they can heal. Are you? Do you get people who come to you and say, Yeah, my dog has a blown cruciate, but I don't want to go to surgery. Can we do something instead, and can you do something instead?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 21:16
So, you know, I always say to people, I'm not here to spend your money, I'm here to educate you. So we go through the whole like, surgical consult, how it would be, you know, as far as, like, there's TTA, there's tplos, there's cplos, this is what it would look like. We could do custom bracing, which I find incredibly helpful for those dogs that don't do can't do surgery, or the owners don't want to do surgery. And even though it's an external stability device that obviously has to be on them for it to work, the body is an amazing thing, and it naturally wants to heal, so that we will get deposition of scar tissue. And, you know, take a CCL case, for example. There's going to be arthritis in that joint, surgery or no surgery, and we just know that, So there's lots of things that we that we have on offer. The customized bracing is a great one. They are light, they are comfortable, and because they are built for to fit that that animal, specifically, they do very well with it, we also have a great relationship with a center that does a lot of intra articular injecting. You know, if we're wanting to, like, support the joint and there's osteoarthritis, there's some great products on the market that act as a cushioning so it won't change the actual joint itself, but it'll be much more comfortable for the animal, which I think is one of you know, really, our biggest purpose is mitigating pain as much as possible. Um, Shockwave is a great option to just kind of keep that joint really healthy. If it's a full tear, it won't rebuild the cruciate, obviously, but if it's a partial, we've seen some great success with Shockwave, yeah, so there's lots of things, and then, you know, like, I said, I always say to people, you've also got the option to do nothing, and that's always an option. You know, like, people don't ever think about that, but it really is, like, if you don't want to do anything, that's still an option. But then, if you know if it's a if it's a financial thing or an effort thing, and then let's just try and do some exercises to ensure that there's some strength and stability, there's some muscle still around that area. As much as we can. We use the underwater treadmill a lot for strength and conditioning, and I love it because it takes up to 80% of the body weight off the dog, and you can still get that concussion so that we're building muscle, so there is something for everyone. It just a lot just depends on your pocketbook and how much effort you're willing to make and what is best for your dog.
Dr. Judy Morgan 23:57
Absolutely. Do you treat cats at all?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 24:03
Yep, I do. I quite like treating cats.
Dr. Judy Morgan
I know we always talk about dogs, and most people don't think about cats doing rehab, but I've seen some great videos of cats doing the same exact things that we do with the dogs. I used to do a ton of chiropractic and acupuncture on cats in my practice, feline Hyperesthesia syndrome responds so well to chiropractic and acupuncture, and most people don't think of that as as a therapy for it, but usually a couple of treatments and they're good to go. So you know, when we say, oh, it's idiopathic, we have no idea why he's stopping and turning around and biting his back. Well, he probably just got zinged by some nerve pain, so maybe we could find a way to treat that. So I think there's so many things that you know we don't, we don't know about, but certainly looking at at the body as a whole. And I'm sure when you see something, we keep talking about cruciates, but when you see something come in with a cruciate. I'm sure that you're not just looking at the leg and going, Okay, well, what can we do to the leg? Why did it What else are you looking at?
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 25:06
Why did it go in the first place? Like, is always my question, right? And you know, to your point, and and so much of what you teach is involved in this. Like, nutrition, what are they eating? What is their profusion to that area, like, are they getting enough blood flow? Is it a genetic issue? You know what caused that to go because in most cases, it's my dog was running and then hep, and he lifted the leg. It's not, he got hit by a car and he shattered his femur, and that's why we have no cruciate it's, it's very the straw that broke the camel's back scenario. Yeah. So, you know, to your point about agility, or even our couch potato dogs, my dog gets treated almost every week because she's an old FC, and she had a cruciate, and she has all these things, and she's a mastiff, and she's 10, and she's still walking a mile. So, you know, awesome. That's pretty cool. But what brought us to that, what brought us to that point? Because the cruciate, yes, is obviously a big deal, but it's a symptom of other things. So if we can unpack and unfurl the onion a little bit and figure out what is at the root of that, do we have a tighter psoas muscle or Sartorius? Do we have a glute that's not firing? Do we have a shoulder instability that's causing compensation on the contralateral limb? What are all these things? And those are the things that we look at in a modified orthopedic and neuro exam. We do a lot of gait analysis to figure those things out. Because if I just zone in on one spot that is winning in the pain category at this point and dysfunction category, I'm really not doing much of a service to my patients, because I'm ignoring the real cause as to why this happened in the first place.
Dr. Judy Morgan 27:01
Exactly I remember I had a dog come to me, and they at the referring veterinarian. They were doing acupuncture and laser on actually, they weren't doing they were doing laser on the stifle. And I brought the dog in, we did thermography to look at where the hot spots were in the body, and did an acupuncture exam, did some chiropractic and discovered, gee, the dog is not getting better, because the problem is not in the stifle. The problem was actually in the hip and up in the spine. And it's sort of like, well, yes, if you keep treating the the the area that's symptomatic, but you're not treating the root cause, which is usually up above somewhere. It's not getting better. And so this was just a very frustrated owner who said, I've had 27 trips to the veterinarian, and my dog is not getting any better at all. So it really is important that we keep that holistic mindset of the whole body. What? Just like you said, what were all the things that brought us to this point of final disaster? So, very cool. Okay, so your website, if I have it right, is integrativeanimalsolutions.com,
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:17
and also rehab4pets.com,
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:22
and you have courses on integrativeanimalsolutions.com until the end of February, we are offering a 15% discount on all courses using the coupon code DRJUDY on integrativeanimalsolutions.com check them out. Dr, Michele is just amazing. She's a great teacher, as you heard, she can break things down into something that is easy to understand for the lay person who is kind of going a who, a what, and she does amazing work on animals. So if you are in the Dallas, Texas area and you have an animal that needs rehab, I would definitely check out rehab for pets. Michele, thank you so much for spending time with us today and giving us some of the little tiny bit of wealth of information that is in your brain. I know there's a lot more in there, and thanks for all you're doing for the animals.
Dr. Michele Broadhurst 29:13
Thank you so much for having me, and we appreciate you.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
