Creature Comfort

Robert LeZotte, pet chiropractor, is a walking paradox. The West Ashley-based doc travels the Lowcountry with his portable chiropractic table, fixing dogs with hip dysplasia, horses with knee pain, even a goat who needed help to produce milk for her kids. Cows, donkeys, a llama and deer—there’s no species LeZotte won’t adjust. And yet he’s allergic to animals.

“I never had dogs or cats growing up because of it,” he says. But in 2013, when a woman called the chiropractic office where he worked “adjusting humans” and pled for assistance with her dachshund’s low-back problems, LeZotte agreed to do what he could. ”The owner called the next day and said Daisy was so much better,” he recalls. ”I decided to go to Animal Chiropractic College so I could make a difference in the care of local animals.”

The doctor has since made his livelihood adjusting Charleston’s carriage horses, as well as pets and livestock as far away as Kiawah Island and McClellanville. “At first, they’re wary: ’Why is this guy here? Why is he touching me?‘” he notes. “After I adjust them, you can see the relief. Sometimes the horses wrap their head around me in a kind of hug.”

LeZotte’s allergies have improved, too: “My body has acclimated a bit,” he says, “but I’m still very allergic to cats.”