Massage for arthritis

Hi, I adopted a dog last year from abroad, he had been abused and kept in a shelter for years.  He was diagnosed with arthritis (not by xray but by examination). He's on Moxicom, which has helped but he has good days and bad days. He loves exploring and days he's more active we go further.  I have been looking into to massage and thinking of booking him a few sessions but there's so many types out there I don't know what's best and what is accredited and what vets would recommend. I was thinking either Clinical Canine Massage or Galen Myotherapy.  Can anyone provide advice on the different disciplines of dog massage and if they are beneficial please? Many thanks

Hello!  Arthritis literally means inflammation of the joints and can make life very uncomfortable.  It can occur increasingly with old age, and can be linked to obesity and to incongruent joints eg (most famously) labrador's hips secondarily to hip dysplasia. I don't know about the age or breed of this dog, or even the joints affected, so it is hard to figure out whether this is likely to be simple osteoarthritis, or secondary to some anatomical  difference or indeed to an injury, such as a fracture.  There are possible infectious causes too, which may vary according to the country of origin.  Nor do I know much about the treatments that you suggest.   For appropriately diagnosed osteo-arthritis in general, pain-killers, weight loss (in obese patients), neutraceuticals, appropriate rest / exercise regimes, resistance training such as swimming and acupuncture all have some degree of evidence behind them, but I haven't seen massage reviewed.  Usefully however, at least one if the companies appears to be run by vets, so it should be very easy to get the two vets (your GP and their vets) to talk to one another, in order to decide whether this treatment would be a suitable match for the specifics of your dog. If resources are limited, a good question I find to ask vets, is 'if you only had X amount of money available to find out what was going on,' or 'X pet month available for long-term treatment, what would you consider to be the best use of that and why?'. And 'What evidence is there for this?'. If I was your vet, the evidence would be important to me in making the decision. I hope that you manage to find the best possible solution for your adoptee.