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Who is Allowed to Treat Animals
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Manual Animal Adjusting
This is also called classic chiropractic on animals. It may also be referred to as diversified chiropractic technique and it is a adaption of human chiropractic methods to animals.
Chiropractic was formally developed as early as 1895 by D.D. Palmer. His son, B.J. Palmer applied those methods to animals in 1917. It has been informally presented at Palmer College of Chiropractic for the last 50 years or more.
Animal adjusting methods and maneuvers have probably been applied to the horse for the last 5000 years in some form or another.
In 1989 a graduate of Palmer, a chiropractor and a veterinarian, Sharon Willoughby DVM, DC started the Options for Animals School to teach veterinarian and chiropractors to manually adjust animals. This group spun of the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association or AVCA.
The AVCA www.avca.org sponsors and directs several teaching organizations dedicated to classic manual chiropractic adjustments. The training is extensive and rigorous. The testing and qualifications are also rigorous and the AVCA certifies practitioners as "CAC" or Certified Animal Chiropractor.
A problem developed early in the 1990s when the Chiropractic Practice Acts in most states were changed to limit "chiropractic" exclusively to " humans" or "the human spine", making the genre "animal or veterinary chiropractic" invalid and not applicable.
This effectively divorced the animal adjusting by chiropractors from the responsibility of the chiropractic baors in each state. This puts the responsibility on the veterinary boards who then have to define this kind of care as "veterinary medicine" and then have to sanction professionals who are not licensed veterinarians.
In 2005 California Certified Animal Chiropractors were told to cease and desist "animal chiropractic" and remove that term from their business card. Other state have follow suit.
This is not fair. The work these practitioners do is most certainly animal chiropractic. To not allow the term is just legal and political semantics.
The clients that receive these services for their animals, describe this care as animal chiropractic and when they recommend these service to their friends they also call it animal or veteriary chiropractic.
To date there are "AVCA Certified Doctors" and "Certified Veterinary Chiropractitioners", along with others, to sidestep this sematic quagmire and comply with the state practice acts