How Massage Helps Improve a Dog’s Digestion
While some digestive issues are more severe and need immediate medical attention, some are not as concerned and can be improved with dietary modifications and canine massage therapy.
While canine massage can help aid your dog’s digestive issues, it can also ensure that their gut and digestive health remain intact to prevent further gastrointestinal problems.
Your Dog’s Gut Health
Your dog’s gut stretches from its mouth to its rectum. It is the pathway the food they eat to follow, gets metabolized, and exits the body. A healthy gut is essential for your dog’s quality of life and needs a good diet and massage.
Your dog’s intestines have natural bacteria that help with the digestion of food. Whenever your dog’s gut isn’t healthy, the gut bacteria produce more gas than they should and use more water than intended.
These actions cause your dog to become bloated from the excess gas and constipated from the lack of water to supply the large intestine.
Common Digestive Issues in Dogs
The most common digestive issues dogs suffer from, according to Cairo University, are:
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- Anorexia
- Bloating
As mentioned, some of these are more severe than others. For instance, excessive vomiting and diarrhea can lead to dehydration in dogs, while anorexia can lead to severe malnutrition. So, these need immediate and urgent medical care!
On the other hand, constipation and bloating are easy fixes. You can adjust the diet or use dog massage to improve your dog’s digestion.
How Massage Helps Improve a Dog’s Digestion
Along with a healthy diet, canine massage can help stimulate the food in your dog’s intestines, allow the bacteria to break down the food through mechanical intervention, and help release any trapped gas in the process.
Slow and easy percussions send impulses through your dog’s gut, helping the food inside the intestines to move along the digestive tract, making it easier for your dog’s body to digest the excess food.
These percussive impulses also help the trapped gas move out of your dog’s gut by allowing the gas to escape past the undigested food inside the gut.
Canine massage also helps to eliminate excess toxins in your dog’s body while producing more beneficial enzymes that improve your dog’s digestive health.
How to Massage a Dog with Digestive Issues
The best way to massage a dog with digestive issues is to ensure that it is calm before starting the session. The more relaxed your dog is, the more accepting it will be of the massage session.
You can either massage your dog with a low-power setting on your dog’s back or its stomach. You will see faster results when you massage the abdomen, but not all dogs will accept having that area massaged at first.
You can also apply percussion therapy on your dog’s chest, which will help eliminate toxins and produce enzymes.
With the Karypet Dog Massage Gun, you can massage any surface of your dog’s body using the interchangeable massage heads, making it the perfect device to aid your dog’s digestion!
