Providing professional rehabilitation service for the canine athlete, working dog and family pet

CANINE REHAB Saskatoon

Below are stories of past & present clients, to include your story follow the link at the bottom of the page...

 

My name is Maureen and I have a five year old Airedale Terrier called Trail.  We do AAC agility all over Saskatchewan at least one or two weekends a month.  Trail is first and foremost my pet and I enjoy everyday with him.  He loves life and is the biggest clown around. 

 

At the AAC Regional Agility Trial 2007 we were out on the course and for the first time ever he just stood in front of a jump and when coaxed he ran around it instead of over it.  For awhile I could not understand why he was doing this, I was very upset that he chose now to become stubborn and refuse to jump.  When we were out at practices he would do the jumps most of the time so it took me a little while to realize something was wrong.  I started with my Vet and she did x-rays to make sure it was not skeletal and it wasn’t.  We put him on pain killers and he started to improve. 

 

Then after a short while he was back to refusing jumps so I tried a chiropractor for dogs to see if he could help me get my beloved pet better.  He did help for awhile but the results did not seem to last more than a week or two.  We had been searching for help for about eight months.

 

Then a friend of mine mentioned Theresa, a Pet Therapist, and we made appointments and up to Saskatoon we went.  Theresa went over every square inch of Trail and identified the pelvic area, the same area as the chiropractor did.  She massaged him and stretched him.  She gave me exercises to do every day with Trail to strengthen his muscles.  When we left I could tell he felt better but he had before.  I did the exercises every day without fail and he seemed to be doing better.  Then I had a clinic with Theresa at my house and she worked on him again and said he was good and the pelvis was still in place and he looked great.  I could have told her that because he was so much better and this time it did last.

 

We have not had a problem since.  I cannot tell you how grateful I am to Theresa for finding and fixing the problem.  So far after four months we’re still problem-free. 

 

I found Theresa to be very professional at all times and very willing to help get Trail back to his old self.        

 

I would recommend Theresa to anyone with a dog that has a problem or just wants to make sure that their dog does not have the potential for a problem.

 

Maureen Hamilton and Trail

For years my dogs have had massage therapy, neurolink treatments, physio, physical go overs, pretty much any type of physical upkeep that human athletes expose themselves to.  This type of vigilance has kept my dogs in top shape, and I credit it for keeping my dogs running at the National level until the dogs are into their teen years.  Theresa has worked on all my dogs for several years now and has been an important part of my training program, as well as a welcome site at our trials.

 

Theresa has worked on different injuries sustained by my dogs as well as keeping on top of them physically to let me know if there is a problem brewing, a bit of a sore spot or a pulled muscle.  And, they just enjoy her working on them as it is very relaxing and just down-right feels good!

All that said though, I think a very good example of excellence in her field has been shown through her work with my now 11 year old Border Collie, Spring.

 

Spring had a litter in 2002, from which she never did fully recover.  She was always tight through her abdomen due to excessive scar tissue which didn’t allow her to stretch out properly.  At the end of our runs, she would always jump into my arms for a hug, this was also over as she couldn’t get the lift without that stretch.

 

This courageous little soul then suffered an FCE on January 1, 2007, fully paralyzing her rear left side and causing partial paralysis on her rear right.  After a couple of days, she did recover the use of both back legs, and over the month of January recovered almost completely on her left side, but sustained a lot of residual damage to her right.

 

With my vet’s approval, Spring began her recovery process in February.

My goal was to have her recover to be able to live a comfortable life.  Between the swimming and the work Theresa did with her, this wonderful little soul competed at our Regional Championships, winning her division with the highest points in the country, then continued on to the Nationals where we placed in our division.

 

As lovely as that was, I don’t think even Theresa knows just how much it means to me, not only to have her back comfortably walking and playing a sport we enjoy to play together, but to have her again jumping up into my arms.

 

To this day, all my dogs get continual upkeep by Theresa.  I firmly believe, as do many of the top handlers in this sport around the world, that this is a very important and integral part of keeping the canine athlete in shape – both physically and mentally.

 

Professionals like Theresa can pick up a weakness on our partners long before they show they are sore or stiff.  And, really . . . how many of us love to have a massage??

 

Kimberley Anderson

Trail and Maureen

Spring and Kim

Testimonials

Are you a past or present client? Want to include your story? Email me at caninerehab@gmail.com

My name is Darcy and my husband, Ken, and I "adopted" Lexus (a tri-colored Sheltie) about 6 years ago (when she was almost 5 years old). We already had a 7 year old Sheltie (Nikki) that we had had since she was a puppy. Our dogs are our pets first and foremost, but I also did agility with Nikki (not terribly successfully but we did have fun). At the time we got Lexus, I had to retire Nikki from agility because she was diagnosed with arthritis. I immediately started Lexus at agility and she and I had a great time together. She was a good little agility girl and very dependable. I found that agility was a fun way of bonding even further with her and the classes offered a night out for us.

 

In the spring of 2007, Lexus was also diagnosed with arthritis in both her shoulders and so we retired her from agility as well. We were still able to go for long, gentle walks and Lexus settled nicely into being a couch potato. In the early spring of 2008, I noticed that something wasn't right with her back end. After watching her carefully, I narrowed it down to her left hind leg. After several visits to more than one vet, she was finally diagnosed with severe arthritis in her hip joint. It was so bad that a piece of bone was actually jutting up from the top of her femur and pressing up into her hip joint. The only option available to us was for Lexus to have a femoral head and neck ostectomy. When I heard what this actually meant in "English", I was not so sure it was something I wanted to put Lexus through. I just could not wrap my head around how she was ever going to be able to walk if they cut off the top of her leg bone and she was basically left without a hip joint. After being told by the vet that Lexus was in an extreme amount of pain and that there were no medications available that would help her at this point, we had no choice but to go through with the surgery.

 

She had the operation on Friday, June 27, 2008, and we brought her home the next day. I was surprised that she actually walked at all on her leg when we got her home. It was very hard for us to watch her trying to get around, and having to start doing physiotherapy with her (just cycling motions with her leg and stretching) mere days after surgery made me pretty squeamish. I knew it was important, so I kept up with it. When she walked, her leg would wobble around and, if she ran, it would flop all over. It just seemed so sad, even though our vet assured us that she was no longer in any pain. I have to say there were many, many days when I looked at her and wondered what on earth we had done to her. Here she was – 11 years old and with arthritis in both shoulders – and we put her through what, to me, seemed like terribly invasive surgery.

 

I had heard from a few people at agility (I am now doing agility with my mom's dogs) that Theresa did canine physiotherapy and she came highly recommended. Once I had the okay from the vet, I gave Theresa a call and we arranged to meet. Theresa used Lexus for a case study, which meant she would come to our house once a week for 8 weeks. She had me hooked on the first visit. She's extremely knowledgeable and was so good with Lexus. She gave me exercises to do with Lexus that I would never have dreamt of doing with her to try to strengthen her leg (Lexus had basically lost all muscle mass in her leg). After 8 weeks, Lexus has gained approximately 3 cm of muscle in her leg and she's doing amazing! She's gotten to the point where she can even jump up on the furniture again.

 

The best part of all this was the day I came home from work and Lexus jumped around in a circle and barked at me. She used to always do this when I came home, but it had been so long since she had done that that I had forgotten that she even used to do it! It proved to me that she was finally pain-free and feeling better. She's back to her playful self again and we actually go for brisk walks. She still tires out easily some days, but it actually seems to be the shoulders that give her more trouble than her hip (Theresa even showed me some stretches to help with her arthritic shoulders). She runs again now, although not quite the same as she used to, but at least she is running. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine we would be where we're at today. We're so incredibly grateful to Theresa for everything she's done for us. She gave us our girl back and for that we will be forever thankful.

 

P.S. Lexi thanks you, Theresa, for those tasty treats you always brought! Nikki (the freeloader) thanks you, too.   

Darcy Bruce

 

Lexus and Darcy