Can Pets Benefit from Physical Therapy?
My three-year-old Labrador just had knee surgery. Is there any sort of physical therapy I should be performing to help him recover?
Amanda
Brooklyn, NY
Physical therapy and rehabilitation are emergent fields in veterinary medicine. Physical therapy has the potential to help cats and dogs suffering from neurological disorders, arthritis, trauma and surgery.
Basic companion animal physical therapy includes procedures such as passive range of motion exercises (in which limbs are gently moved through their normal ranges of motion) and warm or cold compresses.
Advanced physical therapy and rehabilitation may include walking on underwater treadmills (believe it or not, both dogs and cats can perform this activity), electrostimulation of muscles and training with balance boards.
Amanda, your best option is to talk to the veterinarian who performed your dog’s surgery. I am guessing that your dog underwent surgery to correct a cruciate ligament injury. There are several different surgeries available for this injury. In some cases, physical therapy is critical to recovery. In others, physical therapy may actually interfere with healing.
Your vet will know whether physical therapy is appropriate for your dog.
Image credit: Dr. Helmut Steger. Image license: CC
You have questions. 
I had a male lab that at 13 started having a hard time getting up and down so started massaging his hips a couple times a day and it seemed to help him alot. He lived to be 16 yrs old.
While I agree with the majority of your answer, I must take issue with the statement “In others, physical therapy may actually interfere with healing”.
Rehabilitation performed by a qualified practitioner should never interfere with healing. It is true that some modalities might cause problems, but veterinarians trained in rehabilitation will select the appropriate modality for the condition being treated.
Talk to a qualified rehab practitioner to determine what is best for your pet.
I had a foster dog whom I took in after he had trochlearplasty. We had no PT options, as he was a shelter dog and none of the local PT facilities would help me at a discount or for free. I can’t say I blame them. So we had to work on it intiutively.
I did take him to the vet once a week for guidance. The big thing was to get him walking again so the muscles wouldn’t atrophy.
My guy was poorly behaved (obviously why he ended up in the shelter). Our nickname for him was “jerky boy.” The down-time gave us the perfect opportunity to teach him manners. The lesson I learned with this “project” (and others like it) that part of useful therapy during convalesence, is behavior training. We can use the down time to mentally stimulate our dogs and improve their behaviors. Never discount that. Focusing the dog so that they don’t go crazy and re-injure is part of recouperation and rehabilitation too!
Over 10 years ago I worked as a P/T technician at a big veterinary hospital in (where else? ;D) Southern California. P/T helps, believe me! It was amazing to see the recovery times of animals who had had hip surgery, spinal surgery, &c. Some of the therapy we did used neural stimulation (usually after spinal or brain surgery) via a hook-up to an electrical machine, but most was passive Range of Motion, hydrotherapy, gentle walking, or other “typical” physical therapy. We used to put little lifevests on some of the dogs and put them in a deep hydrotherapy tub to swim (while we held the “handle” on top of the lifejacket), gently moving their limbs without bearing weight. It was wa-ay cool. Dogs are great patients … because they are very patient.