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PHYSICAL REHABILITATION
This is an often-overlooked but emerging area of veterinary medicine. Physical rehabilitation is physiotherapy performed by veterinary staff. Physical therapy helps to reduce pain and inflammation and speed healing and recovery.
Injury rehabilitation is also very important in canine athletes. They put greater stresses on their bodies than non-athletes. An injury that allows a house pet to function normally, may prevent an athlete from competing, or a working dog from working. Just like in human athletes, physical therapy such as massage, range of motion exercises, aquatic therapy, electrical muscle stimulation and therapeutic ultrasound help to speed healing and return to athletic form. But whether your pet is an elite athlete or a senior couch potato, conditions can arise that will benefit from physical rehabilitation.
As in humans, physical rehabilitation can be very useful for many conditions such as,
- Arthritis, including hip and elbow dysplasia
- Intervertebral disk disease (back and neck problems)
- Muscle tears
- Degenerative myelopathy (progressive weakening of the back legs)
- Post surgery (fractures and cruciate ligament repairs)
- Any neurologic condition that results in weakness and difficulty walking
 Aquatic or Hydro Therapy
The buoyancy of water allows the patient to work on range of motion of the joints and increase muscle strength and endurance without the strain experienced with weight bearing activities. A good illustration of this is the overweight dog with arthritis in the hips. The extra weight puts strain on the hips but the dog is too sore to exercise to lose weight. Putting this dog in a pool removes the weight from its aching hips, allows increase in motion of the joints, strengthening of the weakened muscles and burns calories to lose weight. This likely could not be accomplished with regular land exercise as it would be too painful. Other indications for aquatic therapy are, after any kind of orthopedic surgery such as cranial cruciate (knee ligament) repair, fractures and back surgery. Most dogs that are paralyzed after back surgery or other trauma to the spine will begin to have movement and use their legs much sooner under water then on land. As already mentioned it can be a great help for arthritis and obesity. Muscle injuries, toe injuries and conditioning for canine athletes and just exercise for your water loving pet. The list of uses for aquatic therapy is almost endless.
There are two types of underwater therapy.
1. Underwater Treadmill
2. Deep Water Swimming
Underwater Treadmill
Swimming against jets
Deep water swimming is a complete, non-weight bearing form of exercise in the water. An underwater treadmill reduces weight bearing on the limbs depending on how deep the water is. A treadmill allows the therapist to control the speed of movement of the legs in the water where as dogs free swimming may use their legs too fast, too soon after injury. It has also been demonstrated that dogs with weakness and paralysis in their legs are stimulated to move them by feeling pressure on their feet when walking on an underwater treadmill as compared to being free in the water. The treadmill can control the speed of the legs but it does not allow sideways movement or turning like deep water can.
Free swimming also has some advantages. Swimming in circles strengthens the back muscles and helps to promote more use and strengthening of a specific leg.
Therefore the ideal hydrotherapy combines free swimming and a hydrotreadmill.
K Laser Therapy 
Laser therapy has been used in humans for many years. The K Laser is a class 4 laser which s the most powerful therapy laser available. Previous classes of lasers were effective for superficial problems but class 4 lasers can penetrate deep in to tissue to allow treatment of large joints like hips, backs and shoulders. Laser therapy works by applying light energy at the cellular level to stimulate the cells and promote healing, increased blood flow and reduced pain. It is non painful and is applied 6 times over a 3 weeks period. Many patients show almost immediate results. Monthly maintenance treatments can often reduce the need for medication. This is especially useful in arthritic cats that do not want to swim or do exercises and are sensitive to many medications.
Applications
Musculoskeletal disorders
- Pain
- Arthritis
- Cruciate LIgament Tears
Post-surgical treatment
Nerve and Spinal Cord Injury or Surgery
Trauma
Wound healing
For more information: www.k-laserusa.com
 One of the unique treatment options we provide at the Spaw is Pulsed Signal Therapy (PST). Pulsed Signal therapy is a new therapy that has been used extensively in Europe for the treatment of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, tendon and ligament injuries, etc. This treatment has been used in Europe for over 20 years with over 100,000 patients. PST is approved for use in Canada on humans.
For background on the principles of PST, it is believed that there is an electrical field around each joint that plays an important part in the continual regeneration of cartilage and connective tissue. If osteoarthritis or inflammatory joint disorders are present, there is a disturbance in this electrical field. PST allows reconstruction of the disturbed electrical field, which returns the natural regeneration capabilities and reactivates the cartilage and connective tissue to increase production of proteoglycans and collagen (the building blocks of cartilage) to aid in repairing the cartilage defects. PST does this by pulsing an electro magnetic field to the treatment area. In human clinical trials there was a significant improvement of pain and "performing" activities of daily living" in greater than 85% of treated patients.
Some of the conditions that may benefit from PST include hip and elbow dysplasia, arthritis of any joint, intervertebral disk disease, tendonitis, wound healing, fracture healing, chronic cruciate ligament injury. This is a completely non-invasive non-painful procedure. It can replace the need for chronic medication and can last up to several years.
For more information go to www.pstvet.com.
Land Treadmill
The use of a land treadmill is the next step after water therapy in strengthening a dog recovering from injury or conditioning an athelete. Because the belt runs under the dog there is less strain then actually regular ambulation as the moving belt does some of the work. This is also helpful to retrain normal gait in recovering dogs or just for exercise on a rainy day. We use a Jog-a-dog treadmill which is specifically designed for dogs. It is over 6 feet long and can go forwards and backwards to allow uphill and downhill walking.
Cold (Cryo) and Heat Therapy is the use of cold and /or heat over an injured or healing area of the body.
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Ice packing after surgery
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Hot packing a sore shoulder
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Therapeutic Exercises are an important part of the rehabilitation services we provide. An exercise may be as simple as doing passive-range-of-motion (PROM) to improve or maintain a joint's flexibility, to ambulation exercises to retrain an animal to walk. Exercises are often devised specifically for each individual patient, so it is difficult to explain all the exercises we may prescribe for a patient.
- Passive range of motion (PROM) exercises increases blood flow to the joint cartilage, stimulate new cartilage production, and are used to increase range of motion at the joint.
- Stretching exercises increase circulation and muscle flexibility.
- Proprioceptive exercises are exercises used to help the animal know where their feet are in space.
- Strengthening exercises (stairs, sit/stands, etc.) are used to strengthen individual muscles or muscle groups.
- Weight shifting exercises are exercises used to help the animal shift their weight to the affected limb or side to make the animal walk more balanced.
- Ambulation exercises are exercises used to re-educate a paretic animal (severe loss of function of their limbs) how to walk.
 
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) is the application of a low level electrical current which results in a muscle contraction. This is achieved by placing electrodes at the beginning and end of the muscle. These muscle contractions can be used to mimic strength training for animals that are non-weight bearing or have limited use of a muscle or muscle group. NMES is used to prevent atrophy post surgery or injury, or to increase strength for muscles that have been chronically underutilized. NMES is commonly used in weak dogs or dogs post surgically before they are weight bearing and during reeducation of ambulation. Electrical stimulation can also be used to decrease pain and swelling.
 
Therapeutic Ultrasound is the use of ultrasound waves to increase the temperature of muscles, ligaments and tendons to reduce pain and increase mobility. It also helps to increase healing of injuries.
 
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