Hydrotherapy

Well - Tassle had her fuirst hydrotherapy session today.

She was a bit stressed at first - she has never worn a life jacket before
there were 3 parts to it. The first section was a jacuzzi type thing - quite warm and with bubble jets, with the physio person massaging her as well to get her all ready. She then went on the tread mill bit for about 5 mins with some water to take the weight off.

She then went into the pool - did a small circuit then back to the lady who held her a checked her heart rate and massaged her back legs - she did that 3 times the the guy held her life jacket for 30secs for her, then she did 2 more circuits (with the lady checking her at each stage).

Needless to say she is whacked tonight having done nothing for 2 months - but we have another 3 sessions bokked over the next 2 weeks so hoipefully she should start to build up a bit. She was quite relaxed at the end and had a good roll on the vet bed

Fingers crossed you'll start seeing a difference in her.

I've found hydro has helped Hoki enormously (though our hydrotherapist works slightly differently as the majority of the session is him massaging/manipulating the muscles/joints).

She has the chiropracter for that - this dog gets better care than me!

Seriously though - I am hoping that it will help her.
What was wrong with Hoki?

Hoki was an extremely overweight rescue (a bc weighing 40kg at her heaviest ). As a result all her joints had suffered, but particularly her knees - she's had two cruciate ligament ops (one on each knee) and has some arthritis in both knees.

The hydro helped with her other joints too while she was recovering (one rear leg out of action puts a lot of strain on the opposite front leg) and to get some muscle tone. She's now doing amazingly well and does fun agility (not full size equipment).

I still take her for the odd session (probably about once every 3 months), but it is now more to keep her loosened up than for healing purposes.

I was so sceptical of hydrotherapy when I first heard of it (for my old bc who had bad hip arthritis), but I've seen so many dogs helped by our hydrotherapist, I'm a complete convert!