Canine

From your family pet to a racing greyhound or an agility athlete, all dogs can suffer from a wide variety of conditions which may benefit from physiotherapy. Dogs, like us, suffer from different issues depending on their stage in life.

Puppies can suffer from developmental problems, including dislocating patella, hip and elbow dysplasia. In addition to this, they often struggle with body awareness, coordination, balance and muscle development.

Contrary to this, elderly dogs often suffer with back pain, stiffness and arthritis. This can prevent them from comfortably carrying out daily activities such as being mobile, standing to feed and lifting their leg during toileting.

Veterinary Physiotherapy can help to improve all of these conditions where Anna will provide the owner with guidance on suitable exercises to enhance your dogs’ rehabilitation. 

Unfortunately regardless of their age, dogs can injure themselves at any time due to falls, accidents, slips and twists during exercise. Any subtle change in temperament or loss of performance should be investigated; as an undiagnosed and untreated injury could cause more serious damage over time. 

Working dogs including sheep dogs and police dogs, as well as those that regularly compete at agility and fly ball are subject to more stresses than the average pet dog. In order to perform to their optimum ability they require sport specific conditioning, body awareness, core stability and pain-free, flexible muscles. Physiotherapy can be used for injury prevention to improve strength, balance, coordination and gait, as commonly known “Prevention is better than a cure”. 

As our dogs are unable to talk to us, they communicate via a variety of methods. As an owner, it is your responsibility to identify when your dog may be informing you that they are in pain. Similar to Humans, dogs require physiotherapy post surgery to reduce recovery time and enhance the healing progress.

Complementary therapies including Veterinary Physiotherapy are now covered by the majority of insurance companies for veterinary referrals, get in contact to find out more.