Veterinary Physiotherapy

What is Veterinary Physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy uses a combination of physical treatments including massage, stretching, electrotherapy and remedial exercise to enhance the body’s natural repair mechanisms. This allows restoration of movement and function to the musculoskeletal and neurological systems.

Used for many years in human medicine, physiotherapy improves recovery time following illness or injury. Advances in veterinary medicine means physiotherapy is now used to improve animals recovery following surgery or injury. 

Physiotherapy is also used alongside conventional veterinary medicine for patients with long-term medical conditions, such as arthritis. In these conditions physiotherapy provides pain relief and improves joint range of motion, flexibility and movement. This has a great benefit to your pet and ultimately can help with improving their quality of life.

Not just for those who are injured or suffer from medical conditions, physiotherapy can also be of great benefit to the health dog or cat. By ensuring that your pet is kept in peak physical fitness through regular checks your pet will stay healthier, fitter and is much less likely to suffer from injuries.

Why does my pet need physiotherapy?

When animals experience pain or injury, they will compensate by altering their posture and movement which increases the risk of injury to other areas of the body. 

Physiotherapy treats your pet in a holistic manner, this means that we treat the whole animal rather than looking at just the injured area. This allows us to pick up where your pet has been compensating and to treat these areas which reduces the risk of them injuring themselves elsewhere.

This is of particular for dogs who have injured their cruciate (Knee) ligament. Due to the increased weight bearing on the non-injured limb during the recovery period there is an increased chance that they will injure the same ligament on the other hindlimb. This is quite a common occurrence, especially for dogs not having physiotherapy treatment, and often means that they need to have a second costly operation on the other limb which could have been avoided.

The main aims of physiotherapy are to:

• reduce pain
• restore mobility and function
• and enhance performance

This is achieved by stimulating the body’s natural healing processes through a combination of physiotherapy techniques including massage, electrotherapy and remedial exercise which are tailored to your pets individual needs.

 All animals can benefit from the effects of physiotherapy. Some of the common conditions we treat include:

• Osteoarthritis 
• Spondylosis
• Cranial Cruciate Ligament (CCL) rupture
• Luxating patella
• Elbow and hip dysplasia
• Pre and post surgical rehabilitation
• Neurological Conditions, e.g. IVDD,  
• Neck and back pain
• Tendon and ligament injuries 
• Muscle tears, strains, atrophy and imbalance
• Fractured Bones 
• Enhance athletic performance for sporting/working dogs and injury prevention 
• Controlled exercise to improve weight loss in overweight animals.   

If your pet has any of the above conditions, or you think that your pet could benefit from physiotherapy then please contact me and I will be happy to discuss the treatment options available.

To read more about these conditions and how physiotherapy is used to treat animals then visit my blog.