Your dog has arthritis or has injured himself. Your vet or someone you know has recommended underwater treadmill, also known as hydrotherapy, to help your pet.
You have called around to a few places that have hydrotherapy and they want your to come in 2-3 times a week for 30mins. Maybe the commute to this clinic is up to 1 hour (or more)!
PLUS they don’t allow you to come back to observe the treatment (I mean who wouldn’t want to see that cuteness overload?!)
I’m sure you have many questions and concerns about this type of treatment: Why is it so expensive for such a short treatment? Why do I have to take my dog so often? It’s so far! Is this really going to help my dog? What am I going to be able to do at HOME to help my dog?
Does my dog REALLY need to do this treatment?
Is this the ONLY other treatment option for my pet?
You are reading this blog, so I know you treat your pet like a member of your family. And you want the absolute BEST for your pet. So this “fancy” piece of equipment MUST be the best option for your pet…Right?
I’ll help to clear a few of these questions up, but first I’ll explain what the underwater treadmill is.
Hydrotherapy involves your pup walking on a treadmill that is inside a topless box. This box is then closed with your dog inside and sealed (again, the top is open). This way, water can be added to the tank at varying levels depending on the goal of the treatment. If your dog has a hard time walking, more water will be added to the tank to help place less pressure on your dog’s joints (the water helps to make your dog move easier in the water by making him lighter). If the goal is to strengthen your dog, less water will be added to create more difficulty for your dog to walk through the water (think walking through shin or knee height water). This is different than swimming and is much more controlled.
Hydrotherapy does provide some benefit including the ability to help your dog walk with less pressure on his legs/joints which aides in exercise for many different conditions. This is best for large dogs with arthritis and/or smaller dogs with hind leg weakness from IVDD (intervertebral disc disease – back/neck problem in dogs). If your dog is paralyzed, it is best for your dog to have SOME function of his back legs before starting this. Additionally, it is best for your arthritis dog to have additional therapy, such as land based exercises that you can do at home.
As you can probably tell, walking on a treadmill underwater has a limited number of options to be able to progress your pet.
We don’t use hydrotherapy in most cases because we feel you and your dog’s time is better spent on land based exercises that you can perform at home (so eventually you don’t need to continue to have rehab). And, more importantly, we need to address the root cause of your pup’s problem FIRST before we can think about walking and/or building strength. This might include joint pain, decreased muscle flexibility, or in the case of IVDD, poor communication between the muscles and spinal cord.
After the root problem is addressed, we need to build strength, which will help your dog walk and get up/down from the floor better. This means we need your dog to participate in a progressive overload program (the exercises are constantly assessed and progressed based on your dog’s ability).
Unfortunately, hydrotherapy doesn’t provide progressive overload to stimulate building of muscle tissue. It doesn’t address the flexibility and joint range of motion issues that many dogs with injuries have. And it doesn’t address the communication between the muscles and spinal cord. It’s literally like a hamster on a wheel. Sure, the hamster might gain some strength initially (if the hamster has appropriate spinal cord/muscle communication, no joint pain, and no flexibility issues), but will often plateau because there are only so many ways to progress and challenge muscles doing the same activity over and over again. Progressive overload of muscles is necessary to keep making progress!
The other major problem with this device is that your pup will likely receive this treatment provided by a technician who may or may not be trained in canine rehabilitation. This means that your dog can be missing out on specialized and individualized treatment. Technicians often are not trained how to progress your pup or the techniques necessary to decrease pain or improve muscle/spinal cord communication. So, unfortunately, many dogs that come to me AFTER wasting valuable time (and money) because they were not appropriately progressed during the treatment. This ends up being very costly in terms of time and money. Not to mention that you want your dog better…FAST.
We also want pet parents to participate in the treatment. Our aim as a rehab professionals is to give you all the tools and knowledge so that eventually you don’t need us! We will teach you exactly how to help your pet and the best way to do it so that we get your pet moving and back to normal as soon as possible.
The truth is, most dogs can recover faster WITHOUT the use of an underwater treadmill in their rehabilitation program. If you were trying to lose weight and you decided to eat healthy only 1-2 days out of the week, you are unlikely to lose weight! Dogs with arthritis and back problems benefit from frequent and short bouts of targeted exercises (that we teach you how to provide) that improve their mobility and get them moving easier.
If your dog has IVDD, hydrotherapy doesn’t address the root cause of the problem, which is the connection from the spinal cord to the muscles. Without improving this communication and connection FIRST, the underwater treadmill will do little to help your pup.
Some dogs do benefit from the underwater treadmill, however in my experience, it is not the best way to help dogs to thrive with arthritis or help dogs with IVDD.
Sure, you want the best possible treatment for their pet and there’s many ways that you can do that…
What pet parents that ask to work with us really want is a natural solution that gets their pup back to enjoy life again, and one that is completely FREE from any MEDICATION.
And here’s how we do it:
We’ll start by seeing what your dog IS capable of and what areas need special attention.
NEXT, we’ll find the correct techniques to decrease pain and improve joint mobility and muscle flexibility so that when we begin strengthening exercises, they will actually work!
And then, we provide simple and easy to follow exercises that are PERSONALIZED so that your dog gets moving easier as soon as possible and gets back to being a dog!
Best of all – We come to YOU to help you and your dog. No need for car rides, traffic, or extra vet visits.
Most people start with a *FREE Discovery Visit* with one of our BEST therapists and it’s where we give away some of our BEST tips – and you get to find out how to help your pet.
There’s no forms to sign and no payment needed. We just want to help you make the right decision about your pet’s recovery. Just hit the button below and fill out the short form. We will give you a call to help you figure out how to best help your pet get back to being a dog again!