Working with animals and painPosted on 10:30am Thursday 27th Aug 2009 Recently I've noticed I've been working with a fair number of horses experiencing physical pain. It makes me realise that I often go through phases of working with uncannily similar underlying issues - sometimes so much so that I get to the next animal and think, "You can't have these problems - they’re exactly what the last two horses had!"
1. Kinaesthesia - feeling the pain in my body
2. Clairvoyance - looking at a photo and being drawn to different areas; or having the animal indicate where it hurts, either by moving his body or showing an image, representation or symbol of where it hurts.
However working in these ways alone, it’s not always easy to interpret the exact intensity of that pain as the animal experiences it. As a result, it can also be helpful to use a pain scale.
A pain scale is commonly a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 (or 0) is no pain, and 10's the worst pain ever experienced, but you can use any kind of gauge from thermometers to car rev counters or speedometers. They've even been adapted into cartoon faces for young children, ranging from a happy face all the way through to downright miserable. With most animals, I find the numbers work very well. Using a scale also makes it quick and easy to compare different or closely related parts of the body, and also a way of comparing ‘before and after’ pain, allowing me to see what’s changing and by how much.
So once the animal has communicated an area of discomfort or pain I'll ask him to rate it on a scale of 1-10, and the response is usually a pretty accurate guide to what's going on. If it’s 15/10 there’s a problem. If it’s 3/10 it may just be a grumble. And anything above 5/10 is where working with the emotions starts making things a lot more interesting.
For a start, any animal that tells me he's got 15/10 pain will also be giving me a lot of emotional information. Imagine having excruciating back pain, someone still wanting you to give them a piggy back and the doctor telling you there’s nothing physiologically wrong, and you’ll have an idea of what some of these feelings can be:
I can’t take this anymore This is unbearable They don’t understand They’re not listening to me They don’t see me
These statements, thoughts and feelings are the clue to what’s really going on underneath the pain. All those statements could lead to a past trauma or significant negative event. And when an animal expresses such feelings, as a therapist what I want to know is:
What is it you really can’t take any more of? What’s making it unbearable? Who doesn’t understand? Who isn’t listening? Who isn’t seeing you?
In my experience, these questions are rarely answered in the present, or in the pain itself. And usually you can't begin to help that animal with his real pain until you’ve answered them.
The best bit of all for your vet is that, by dealing with these deeper underlying issues, it’s possible to help the animal benefit the most from modern veterinary science and manipulative therapies.
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