By Jere Hough Meteorologist / Feature Reporter
Published: Fri, November 09, 2007 - 5:04 pm
Last Updated: Fri, November 09, 2007 - 5:30 pm
Last Updated: Fri, November 09, 2007 - 5:30 pm
Jere Hough
He explains his work, "Animal Chiropractors work with all quadrupeds...basically dogs, cats, horses. The majority of my practice is horses."
His tools are his hands and an activator...a small air pump that produces pulses of pressure. He searches for responses from the horse that would indicate pain.
He is in such demand, he flies his own plane to make his rounds.
"I range from Houston to Atlanta, and I range from the Gulf Coast to Memphis," he says. He makes his rounds about twice a month.
One of his patients is the second fastest horse in North America.
This is a second career for Cleveland. "I had a chain of human chiropractic clinics on the Gulf Coast for twenty years and I sold them all and retired."
Then he went back to school and became Board Certified to treat animals...which, he says are much better patients than people. "They respond to chiropractic probably ten times better than humans do." He also adds that horses don't take cell phone calls during treatment or ask if he's a member of their HMO!
After some minor adjustments, Romance, the horse, is brought out of the stable to the yard and given some stretching therapy and then pelvic manipulations.
How big an issue is animals' inability to verbalize their symptoms?
Smiling, he says, "They can't talk, but they can communicate. And they'll let you when they're hurting. And if you probe in the right places, they'll definitely let you know...Just about every day I get kicked at."
Cleveland is writing a book called, The Animal Cracker Chronicles to be published next year.
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