Today we’d like to introduce you to Philip Rodger.
Hi Philip, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We moved to Florida in July of 2016, and we’ve been doing animal chiropractic here ever since — though back then we were RiverTown Chiropractic, and it was a side hustle. Weekends. Evenings. Whatever hours we could find.
My wife, Dr. Angela, was the animal chiropractor. I was strictly a human chiropractor. We’ve always been mobile.
For almost five years, that’s how it went.
By February of 2021, Angela was busy enough that we had a decision to make: hire another chiropractor, or send me through the animal chiropractic training. I was building out our human office in Jacksonville at the time — worth mentioning, since we live in Ocala — so I had the flexibility to go. I started that March and finished in August, and began seeing animal patients alongside my human ones.
Then everything changed.
Angela got pregnant in June. In October we found out we were having twins. In November, we found out there were complications. In December our identical girls were born at 26 weeks at Tampa General. We lost Hailey four days later. Emma spent the next four months in the NICU.
That’s when I knew I couldn’t be that far from home anymore.
In February of 2022 we sold RiverTown Chiropractic — it’s still open today, still serving that community — and we rebranded ourselves as Synchrony Chiropractic. All animals. Full time.
Here’s the part I can’t get past. When we were running the human office, we were breaking even at best. Once we went all-in on the animal side, the business took off. And that training I finished in August? If I hadn’t done it exactly when I did, the practice Angela spent five years building would have shrunk dramatically or died outright, because she couldn’t work for nearly four months.
I don’t call that luck. God has a funny way of putting the right thing in place right before you need it, and you usually don’t see it until you look backward.
Emma came home to a calendar full of specialists, and not long after, we learned she has cerebral palsy. That reshaped everything about how our days run. Angela’s full-time job became being Mom — she still adjusts animals on the side, but Emma comes first, and that’s exactly how we want it. We went from two incomes to one, and we’ve still been able to do everything we were doing when we both worked full time. Watching that little girl work harder before breakfast than most people do all day changes how you think about a hard Tuesday.
And we never left Jacksonville behind. We built such a strong base up there that we still make the drive nearly every Monday — a full day of house calls for the people and animals of northeast Florida. Some of those clients have been with us since the RiverTown days.
The rest of the week you’ll find us in barn aisles, at agility trials, and in driveways all over Central Florida, keeping dogs, horses, and the people who love them in sync.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth? No. Not even close.
For five years there was no such thing as a day off. I was running a human practice full time, and every weekend and evening that wasn’t spoken for went to the animals. That’s the part people don’t see when they hear “we built a business.” We built it in the margins.
And the human office was a grind. We poured years into that Jacksonville build-out and it broke even at best. If you’ve ever run a business that looked successful from the outside while you quietly wondered how much longer you could keep it going, you know the feeling.
Then December of 2021 happened, and everything we thought our life looked like got rearranged in about four days. That’s what forced the decision — we sold the human practice, went all in on the animals, and went from two incomes to one overnight.
The work itself isn’t easy either. A mobile practice means my office is my truck. Ten stops is a full day, and a full day is ten hours. I drive to Jacksonville nearly every Monday. There’s no waiting room full of patients — every appointment is one I earned by showing up, doing good work, and having somebody tell their barn friend about it.
The calendar has its own personality. Some months are packed wall to wall, with canine events every weekend and sometimes two stacked on top of each other. Other months there are one or two. Summers are always quieter — the snowbirds head north and a lot of the horses leave the area to get out of the heat. I’ve stopped panicking about it. Every single time, God has made sure there’s enough on the schedule to keep everything running. Not extra. Enough. That’s been true for ten years now.
And then there’s the education piece, which never really ends. Plenty of people hear “chiropractor for your dog” and assume it’s something between a massage and a magic trick. Some vets have been enthusiastic partners. Others have told clients to wait and see, or that there’s nothing to be done. I don’t take that personally — most of them simply weren’t taught this exists. But it means a lot of my job is explaining, demonstrating, and then letting the animal do the convincing. That part never fails. The horse takes a full breath. The dog turns around and asks for more. The owner gets quiet.
Here’s what I’ve learned about a hard road: it clears out everything that isn’t essential. We know exactly what we do and exactly who we do it for. Not many people get handed that kind of clarity.
We’ve been impressed with Synchrony Chiropractic, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Synchrony Chiropractic is a mobile chiropractic practice serving animals and the people who love them across Central Florida. We come to you — the barn, the house, the driveway, the parking lot at a trial. There’s no waiting room, because there’s no room. There’s a truck and a schedule.
We work primarily with dogs and horses, with a heavy concentration in performance animals: agility dogs, sport horses, and the weekend warriors who love them.
Here’s what sets us apart, and it’s the whole reason for the name. I’m a chiropractor for people and for animals. That’s an unusual combination, and it changes what I’m able to see. When a handler comes to me because their dog keeps knocking bars on left turns, I’m not just looking at the dog. I’m watching how the handler moves. When a horse won’t pick up a lead, I want to know how the rider sits. Animals compensate for us constantly. A rider with a locked-up right hip trains a horse to travel crooked, and you can adjust that horse every month forever without fixing the actual problem.
So we treat the team. Both halves of it. That’s what “Keeping you and your team in sync” actually means — it’s not a slogan we put on a shirt, it’s the clinical philosophy.
The other thing I’d want your readers to know is that we’re education-first and judgment-free. A lot of owners come to us apologizing — for waiting too long, for not noticing sooner, for something they read online. I have zero interest in that. Nobody taught most people what to watch for. My job is to show you what I’m seeing in your animal so you become a better observer of them, whether or not you ever book with me again. Trust what you’re noticing. You know your animal better than anyone.
Brand-wise, the thing I’m proudest of has nothing to do with a logo. In the agility world, a lot of people know us as the Cookie Man and Cookie Woman. We show up at the big competitions as vendor sponsors, and yes, we bring cookies. It started as a small thing and turned into the thing people recognize us by. I love that. We didn’t build a reputation by out-advertising anybody — we built it by being present in a community we genuinely belong to, weekend after weekend, whether or not anyone booked an appointment. That’s the brand. Show up, be useful, be someone people are glad to see.
Practically, house calls run Tuesdays and Thursdays around Ocala, and nearly every Monday I make the drive up to the Jacksonville area for a full day with our northeast Florida clients. Weekends, we’re usually at an event somewhere. If your animal moves for a living or for fun — or just isn’t moving the way they used to — that’s exactly who we’re built for.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Showing up. Consistently, and especially when there’s no obvious payoff in it.
Anybody can be enthusiastic when the schedule is packed. The business gets built in the other stretches — the summer months when the snowbirds are gone and the horses have shipped north, the trial where we set up all weekend and don’t book a single appointment, the five years we did this on nights and weekends before it was anybody’s full-time job. We kept showing up anyway. That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.
And I’ll be honest about what makes that possible, because I can’t tell this story without it: faith. Every slow season I’ve ever had, God has made sure there was enough. Not extra — enough. Once you’ve watched that happen enough times, you stop white-knuckling the quiet months and just go do the work in front of you.
The rest takes care of itself. People remember who was there.
Pricing:
- Initial visit Horse – $240
- Initial Visit Dog/Cat – $180
- Routine Visit Horse – $185
- Routine Visit Dog/Cat – $125
- Varying Travel fee for Jax $60-$100 depending on location.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.synchronychiro.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/synchronychiro
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/synchronychiro
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/synchronychiro
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/synchronychiro
- TikTok: https://tiktok.com/synchronychiro
