What is animal physiotherapy and what can it do for my animal?

Animal/veterinary physiotherapy (physical therapy) is a complementary therapy which is carried out under veterinary referral. The most common areas of treatment are:

• Performance enhancement and treatment of musculoskeletal injuries in the ridden horse and working or competition dog.
• Post operative rehabilitation for animals with orthopaedic or neurological conditions.
• Enhancement of quality of life in patients with degenerative conditions such as arthritis – slowing degeneration and treating compensatory muscle spasm.

In optimum conditions nature will heal an injury in a particular time span. However, for many reasons, these conditions are not always readily available. In these circumstances the injury will take longer to heal than nature intended or at worst may not heal at all. The aim of the physiotherapist is to optimise these conditions so that the body can heal the injury in its natural time span.

Physiotherapy is delivered by:

• Physiotherapeutic equipment
• Manual techniques
• Rehabilitation

The following are some of the conditions that can be helped by physiotherapy:

• Soft tissue
• Sore/bruised muscles
• Muscle spasm
• Muscle strain
• Muscle tightness
• Muscle atrophy
• Routine checks and maintenance
• Tendons and ligaments
• Ruptured tendons and ligaments of the legs and joints
• Sacroiliac injury
• Cruciate ligament rupture
• Muscle origin and insertion tendon strain
• Optimise post-op repair
• Orthopaedics
• Optimise repair of fractures both normal and non-union
• Help to ease pain in arthritic and diseased joints and slow down further degeneration
• Improving and maintaining range of movement and muscle tone
• Splints
• Wounds
• Assist wound repair to minimise scarring and proud flesh
• Fight bacterial regeneration
• Broken down sutures
• Mud fever/rain scald
• Cracked mouths
• Gingivitis
• Optimise post-op repair