How to Massage Older Dogs

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Mary with expertvillage.com and today we're going to talk about the geriatric dog, the older dog. How old is that you ask? Well some of it depends on the breed but mostly if you've got a dog who's seven years of age in human terms or older, you've got a geriatric dog. This little one right here is thirteen so she's definitely a geriatric dog. One of the big things you can do for a geriatric dog is to work their chest area. One of the things that you do is pull their forelegs apart like this and that helps to stimulate the whole lung and the chest area. Then you're going to do rubbing motions. You're going to rub in a circular, light, gentle, easy clockwise motion. Please make sure it's clockwise because that's how the circulatory system works and you really don't want to go against the circulatory system or you might end up with a lot of problems. When you're done, you just very gently put the foreleg back and you'll proceed on to the next part of your massage."