Healing Paws Acupuncture & Chiropractic

Dr Cahill is so sweet! She takes amazing care of my dogs and truly cares about their well being. I would recommend her services to anyone.

Dr. Cahill works in a room inside Splash Dog (among other locations), where my dog has been going for swim therapy for quite some time. She was recommended to me by the owners of Splash Dog for our bullmastiff with two fake knees (tore both ACLs by the time she was 4), but we actually started going to Dr. Cahill because one of our other dogs got hurt.
Our young male bullmastiff, Ajax, had been acting strange. When we first came home he had his head down and didn’t come to greet us, a sure sign he had decided to rip something up while we were gone. But, search as we may we couldn’t find anything destroyed. Soon we realized that he was also moving slow and was lethargic and we realized that he was actually in pain. He had somehow managed to hurt his back.
Not knowing what to do, we took him to the vet. They x-​rayed him and couldn’t find anything wrong and prescribed some rimadyl. Not satisfied and steal dealing with a dog clearly in pain for a couple of days now I convinced my husband to let me take him to get acupuncture. Now I get acupuncture and have for years, but my husband was convinced that any healing achieved was psychosomatic. Not knowing where else to turn though, he agreed.
After ONE visit to Dr. Cahill he was almost instantly back to himself! Unless the dog somehow understands why we’re poking him with needles, I’d say that is some pretty powerful proof that acupuncture works!
Now we regularly take our older bullmastiff with the fake knees as she now has related hip trouble. But since we’ve been taking her to Dr. Cahill (we’ve slowed to every other month now) and performing very simple exercises every night (they take literally 2 – 3 minutes) that Dr. Cahill recommended, at 8 years old she hasn’t been this energetic since she was a puppy!
She is a true lover of animals and healer.

Dr. Patricia Cahill was recommended to me by several people and I can say that they were right about her. She’s awesome. She has been a licensed vet for 22 years and now practices Eastern Medicine and chiropractic care.
I wasn’t sure what to expect and was really scared of how my cat would react to being stuck with needles. He has multiple problems and I didn’t even know if acupuncture would help, but I was willing to try. After three visits, my cat was running and playing again. He will never return to being a kitten, but his quality of life has definitely improved. He started jumping on the counter again when I was fixing his dinner and although it’s bad behavior, I’m so happy he is doing it.
Dr. Cahill is also very therapeutic for the humans as well. I feared that my cat might be coming to the end of his life — or at least the end of a happy and active life. It was so upsetting to me and I was struggling with decisions I might have to make in the near future if I couldn’t get his health problems under control. Dr. Cahill would talk to me about my journey with my cat and our life together. She shared stories with me about her own animals and how much they contributed to her life. By the time each session was over, I felt like I had just gone to therapy with someone that really gets what it’s like to be so attached to an animal. She really helped ease so many of my fears and put things in perspective.
Dr. Cahill doesn’t force animals to do what they don’t want. That isn’t in line with Eastern medicine. On the first visit, my cat let her stick needles all over him and he was fine with it, but the third trip he had a very pissy look on his cat face and didn’t want anything to do with getting needles stuck in him. She said that when things work as they should, by the third visit, cats are feeling better and don’t want to be messed with.
A friend of mine is a physical therapist and said that acupuncture often works better and faster on animals than on humans. When I asked Dr. Cahill about this she said it’s because humans let their mind get in the way of healing where as animals just accept it.
My cat has only had acupuncture done so far, but am considering chiropractic in the near future.
Dr. Cahill’s office is located inside Splash Dogs in Des Plaines. She also has an office in Northbrook.