This month is pet pain awareness month and though I’m not one to recognize such things, this one hits home for me. So grab your cup of coffee, tea, or glass of wine and get comfortable, because I have some thoughts to share.
When I was 10 years old, I fell on my head from a trapeze on our family swing set. I blacked out, woke up dizzy, and shouted for my mom. Once she brought me inside, she called the doctor who told her to let me rest and see how I felt the next day (this is 1992, how lucky of me.) The next morning I woke up unable to get out of bed on my own because my neck hurt so much.
As a young girl in pain, all I really remember from that doctor appointment was hearing “a dent in the skull” and “neck muscles tied up in a knot.” They put me in a fabric neck brace for two weeks, and called it healed.
I’ve had chronic pain ever since. As a kid, it was really bad neck pain and stiffness, especially after an active day. Once I hit adolescence, I started to have daily sharp headaches, plus that neck pain whenever I really pushed myself, which was often. I was told that I just had a bad neck and was prone to headaches and was given a pain reliever. As a competitive track athlete in high school, I experienced constant, performance altering knee pain. The orthopedic surgeon pointed out that my legs were uneven, and then advised surgery on both my knees which took away any option of running in college.
I also had chronic anxiety for as long as I can remember, panic attacks that occurred frequently, and I was never able to take a really deep breath.
Shortly after getting married and then having a miscarriage, I began getting a nagging headache on the left side of my head. The first month it was for 3 days, the next it lasted 5 days in a row, then 7 days, and then finally when it reached 14 days I went to the ER. After the visit to the ER and then a month later to urgent care, I was diagnosed with migraines of unknown cause.
It was suggested to me to take Tylenol or Excedrin Migraine. I saw a neurologist who put me on a magnesium supplement and said how sorry he was that I was having so much pain at such a young age.
And with that, the nagging, occasional headache slowly but surely turned into daily migraines, coupled with constant neck pain, that led me to bed most days. I proceeded to experience eight years of chronic migraines. Eight years of daily, debilitating pain.
Those of you who know me wouldn’t be surprised that I tried literally everything to remedy the pain. I eventually found myself in Boston to see the top neurologist in the country. I worked with them for years and tried everything that they could suggest. Countless medications, botox, acupuncture, diet changes, every supplement you could imagine, craniosacral, biofeedback, symptom and trigger tracking. You name it, I tried it. And yet, nothing worked.
Despite my attempts to explain that I did not believe this was idiopathic and was determined to find a cause, I was told over and over again that I would likely have migraines forever, or at least until menopause. For someone who does not give up, I was provided with plenty of reasons to.
During all of this, my career and my ability to train dogs nearly came to a halt. I was lucky in that my husband Chris and my team continued to run my business without me there often. My social life all but disappeared. All the while, disability benefits were something I could never pursue because migraine pain was too difficult to quantify.
I finally went to a naturopath who listened to me. Rather than just trying conventional medications and treatments, we did a deep dive into my overall health. When reviewing my history one day, we began discussing my head injury, neck pain, and other symptoms that I had experienced outside of my migraines. He guided me to an optometrist who specialized in head trauma.
Well, she changed nearly everything for me. My eyes weren’t properly communicating with my brain, a symptom of a traumatic head trauma, and after setting me up with prism eye glasses, she sent me to an upper cervical chiropractor who found my neck to be severely out of alignment. My first chiropractic adjustment I walked in with a migraine, and left without one. For the first time. Ever.
My C1 was out of alignment from that fall as a child. That damage to my neck caused everything. My uneven legs is how my chiropractors determine that my C1 is out of alignment – my neck caused the knee pain that led to double knee surgery during the height of my track career as a student. I have no doubt that the chronic anxiety was a result of my emotional and physical trauma. I even began breathing better.
The moral of my very long story is this: I am a human who can communicate with other humans. I can tell people, family, doctors, and friends exactly where my pain is, exactly how much it hurts, and exactly how often it hurts. And yet, the cause of my pain went unfixed for 30 years, between my fall and the resolution. And it wasn’t for lack of caring from my family and friends, and even some of my doctors.
And perhaps one of the biggest barriers to finding a successful treatment was that my pain had become normalized. I adapted to it. I masked the pain, and I masked it really well, because I had years of experience in doing so. When you have chronic pain you just learn to go on with life, until it just becomes unbearable. But there can be many years before you reach that point.
Now think of our dogs. Our dogs who can’t talk. Who can’t tell us when or where or how bad their pain is. They may try to tell us with behavior changes. Aloofness. Hyperactivity. Reactivity. Distractibility. Lack of focus. Aggression. Avoidance. Fear. Low food drive. And it nearly always gets overlooked as a training issue.
So back to my header: this month is national pet pain awareness month.
We don’t know that dogs have headaches or migraines.
This picture is my girl Jane, two days after getting a seed stuck up her nostril and sneezing so violently that she hit her nose against the pavement multiple times. The ER vet confirmed that the seed had come out on its own, and she was healthy and fine to go home, but two days later I knew she was in discomfort by her behavior. She was depressed and lethargic and was slow to eat her meals. And yet, she eagerly came on her hikes and asked to play fetch. But I still felt something was off, so I brought her to her chiropractor. Her C1 was severely out of alignment (just like mine often is.) After an adjustment, she promptly went back to her normal self.
She also stopped sleeping with her head resting against the wall. I only saw that one other time, and again, she needed an adjustment. My anecdotal experience is that dogs may use hard surfaces to rest against to relieve pain.
I have SO much more I can say. But I’ve taken up too much of your time already, so for now, I’ll say this: I still have chronic neck pain and migraines. It isn’t nearly as bad as what it used to be and I’m truly grateful for that. However, when I wake up with a headache or a stiff neck, I can’t help but envision being a dog. Having a collar put on me and taken for a walk, brought to dog daycare, or trained for a sport. And heaven forbid, receive a collar correction. It is simply unbearable for me to think about not even having the words to try to explain the pain I feel.
Consider pain for your pet. And if your intuition tells you that it’s the cause of a behavior problem, keep searching and probing until you find the solution. Your beloved dog will be so thankful.
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