Meet Lola Michelin, Northwest School of Animal Massage

“I am very excited and humbled to be involved with the new Animal Wellness Guide and with the many outstanding professionals who will be bringing posts to you on a regular basis.

On the first day at my first job as a veterinary assistant, I witnessed a sweet older Scottish Terrier receive acupuncture for back pain and it confirmed my belief that I wanted to be a veterinarian. A few years later, as an earnest pre-veterinarian student, I had little idea what lay ahead for me. I had carefully plotted out the path of my life and nothing in it included massage. During a summer internship as a veterinary technician at the Detroit Race Course, I got my first glimpse of the healing powers of massage. And throughout several years of various zoo jobs and horse jobs, somehow animal massage kept reappearing in one form or another. It seems that another power had been hard at work plotting out the path of my life as well.

Sharing my experiences with others about the amazing animals I have worked with is one of the most exciting aspects of being an educator in the animal massage field. In the months ahead, I look forward to sharing some of those experience with the readers here. So if you are curious about how to massage a giraffe, about why manual ligament therapy holds the key to treating back pain in horses or when to use passive positional release techniques along with passive repetitive stretching…then keep an eye out for my future blog posts here.

Here’s to higher learning for all!”