Physical Therapy for Dogs

Animal physical therapy first got its start in the big-money sport of horse racing. When you drive horses hard as all that, of course, there are going to be injuries. Since there is a lot of money riding on these horses, they worked out many rehabilitative techniques to help them. Modern physical therapy for dogs draws comes from these efforts.

Rehabilitation is about the most popular elective in veterinary medicine today. There are more than a dozen veterinary schools that offer specific courses in physical therapy for dogs, and about 500 physical therapists practice this skill today.

If you're unfamiliar with how physical therapy for dogs can help, you're probably wondering at this point, how exactly physical therapy might even be needed. How does physical therapy help a dog, exactly?

When a dog suffers an injury or undergoes surgery of some kind, a little bit of physical therapy can help considerably in the recovery. But it can do other things. It can help the dog gain better flexibility and become more athletic. It can help with weight loss, too.

Let's say for instance that your pet has just had surgery for kidney stones or something. Of course, he can't go and walk about right after, because it could be painful. If you let your pet just rest it out for a week or so, that wouldn't really work, because her joints and muscles quickly become very stiff and even start to atrophy even after a couple of days of no movement. If you find this hard to believe, just think of what happens every morning, when you get up from a full night's rest. Doesn't your entire body feel stiff?

Now imagine what would happen if you were to try to rest for a whole week without moving much?  You would be completely unable to move if you were asked to get out of bed at the end of the week. Your muscles would have atrophied, and your joints would have become extremely stiff. Do that for even longer, and you might permanently lose the use of your limbs.

Physical therapy for dogs is very useful when your dog is in pain from arthritis or any kind of injury, too.

Physical therapy canine rehabilitation has come a long way from the one-size-fits-all attitude that was used at first. These days,  the physical therapist will work together with your dog's veterinarian to develop a program just for your dog. It works just the way it does with people.