Insider Info

Can you see yourself manipulating the spine of a rodeo bull? Or getting touchy-feely with an iguana? As animal chiropractors, Alison Seely and William Schmidt do it for a living -- and love every hairy, scaly minute of it.

A veterinarian by training, Seely first discovered the wonders of chiropractic when she married into a family of chiropractors. "My husband, three of his brothers and one sister-in-law are all chiropractors," she explains. "For any vet who marries a chiropractor, it's pretty inevitable that they'll become interested in animal chiropractic."

Another event that convinced her was watching a seemingly untreatable colt respond to chiropractic in her last year of veterinary school. "The delighted owners sold the colt at a great profit after the first adjustment," she recalls.

Now Seely divides her time between her veterinary practice and animal chiropractic work. Most animals welcome an adjustment, she says, which is a much different response from the one she gets "as a white-coated, needle-bearing veterinarian."

Schmidt, on the other hand, began his career as a chiropractor. He works in Arkansas. "I have approximately 30 years of human practice, 13 years of animal practice," he says. "I generally do horses, though I have and do treat dogs, cats, lions, tigers, snakes and rabbits."

Back in the days when he treated only humans, Schmidt had a patient who owned thoroughbreds. Intrigued by the possibility that his profession could also help his patient's animals, Schmidt sought out some old hands at practicing chiropractic on horses.

"I saw they could increase a horse's speed by 10 to 13 links," he recalls. "So then I followed them from track to track around the U.S. I probably worked with these guys on a few thousand horses."

He estimates that he "spent in the area of $60,000 to learn what I know about animals" on his cross-country adventures. It's paid off, though: Schmidt is now considered one of the top equine (horse) chiropractors in the U.S.

He still treats humans on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. "Generally," he says, "on Tuesdays, Thursdays and on Saturday mornings, I close up and I work with a vet in Little Rock, Arkansas, on animals. I fit the animals around the human practice."

Both Schmidt and Seely have certification from the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association (AVCA). AVCA sets the standards for animal chiropractic in North America.

"I think obtaining certification is important," says Seely. She made the trip to the AVCA headquarters with her husband in 1994.

"When we went, we were both of the opinion that it was a skill that would be [more easily] learned by a chiropractor than by a vet," she recalls.

But after seeing dogs that have been injured by chiropractors unversed in animal chiropractic, she thinks it's just as important for chiropractors to receive training as it is for vets. "They shouldn't assume that their skills can just be translated to an animal," she says.

Seely and her husband conduct seminars for horses and riders "where he checks out the riders and I check out the horses," she says. "It's interesting because you can predict the problems being experienced by the horses from what the riders are experiencing, and vice versa. Certainly, a horse who's out of whack will put them out of whack."

Besides the obvious physical benefits to the animals, animal chiropractic fosters "a better relationship between the animals and the owners," according to Schmidt.

It can even improve the health of the owner. Seely recalls one elderly woman who felt that the worsening condition of her beloved dog was hastening her own decline. "The neat thing was seeing this lady come back to life again along with her pet," she says.

On a more personal level, remarks Seely, "It's very rewarding to see exciting changes happen to an animal through touch.

"There are very many cases I can think of: a dog who had never wagged his tail before being adjusted, seeing horses where no one wants to deal or touch the horse because it's in such pain and then seeing that horse metamorphose as a result of chiropractic therapy."

Because animal chiropractic is still a developing field, practitioners must believe in the value of what they're doing. "They need to have fortitude because right now there's a lot of back-stabbing, bitterness and turf wars going on," says Schmidt.

"There's a lot of people out there in the chiropractic profession who aren't interested in treating animals. And there's also a lot of people in the veterinary profession who aren't interested in chiropractic."

What sustains him, he says, is "seeing the response of the animals, or what happens when an owner has been told to put the animal down and then doesn't have to after the animal has had chiropractic treatment."

Such was the case with Elvis, a bucking bull who had been seen by five different vets. Each vet concluded that his was a hopeless case. "This bull was so bad that the other bulls tried to kill him," says Schmidt.

Then Schmidt treated him. "I found a misalignment where the riders sit," he recalls. "Two weeks after the adjustment, he was back at work and bucked off nine different riders."