Larrie blew out a knee last November, the victim of a misstep while descending a towering A-frame ramp on an obstacle course.
Yes, Larrie’s a dog. And had her (yes, Larrie’s a she) injury occurred just five or 10 years ago, she likely would have undergone surgery, then spent six weeks in a cage while her leg healed. Instead, the red and white border collie entered an aggressive rehabilitation program that had her jogging on an underwater treadmill, stretching on a plump rubber ball and exercising on a balance board shortly after surgery.
In other words, veterinarians treated her the way doctors these days treat sidelined football players or hobbled joggers — like the injured athletes they are.
The regimented recovery program worked for Larrie, a top canine athlete whose speedy laps around those agility courses has taken her from Slovenia to Finland and, this month, to the finals of the U.S. Dog Agility Association Nationals in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Larrie trots into the Canine Rehabilitation & Conditioning Center in Round Rock, Texas, these days like she owns the place.
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She hardly complains as Sandra Hudson, a certified canine rehabilitation practitioner, hoists her onto a yellow “physio-roll,” kind of a giant Tootsie Roll-shaped exercise ball. Hudson bounces the dog gently on the inflated ball until she relaxes her back. Larrie’s eyes glaze ever so slightly as Hudson massages her gently and rocks her back and forth.
Muscles properly loosened, it’s onto the underwater treadmill, a crib-size pool with a latching door. Larrie stands quietly while the tank slowly fills with 94-degree water. When the water reaches Larrie’s belly, Hudson flips a switch and the treadmill begins to move.
Her fur swirling in the current, Larrie cruises at a 2.5 m.p.h. pace for about 45 minutes. A dachshund recovering from back surgery might plod along at just 0.4 m.p.h.; some speedsters eat up the treadmill at 5 m.p.h. When Larrie gets bored, Hudson tosses a rubber ball at her; she bats it out of the treadmill tank with her nose.
The treadmill works for surgery patients because it reduces the weight load on the animal while still allowing it to move with a normal gait. If the tank is filled to hip level, the water helps support more than a third of the dog’s body weight. The warm water also eases sore muscles, and the hydrostatic pressure it creates helps reduce swelling.
The treadmill also comes in handy for overweight pets who need a low-impact form of exercise. One of Hudson’s canine clients lost 18 pounds in six months by exercising on the treadmill. For Larrie, next up is the balance board, a square platform on a base that lets the board wobble like a bobblehead doll. Shortly after surgery, when Larrie didn’t want to stand on her repaired leg, the board forced her to flex her toes and grab the board with her paws. Now, Hudson tips the board back and forth, then side to side, as Larrie struggles to stay aboard.
Hudson also uses cavelettis, horizontal raised poles that are spaced apart, to help her patients improve strength, range of motion and stride. And she works with her clients’ owners to teach them exercises they can do with their pets at home — a key, she says, to successful recovery.
Hudson works with dozens of animals such as Larrie, many of them sporting dogs that compete in everything from field testing to retrieving to obedience. Her patients are referred by veterinary surgeons, who say torn anterior cruciate ligaments, or ACLs, top the list of injuries among dogs. (The knee injury is common in humans, too, with an estimated 80,000 ACL tears a year in the United States.)
6 surgeries a week
At the Veterinary Specialty Center of Texas, adjacent to the rehab center, surgeons perform an average of six ACL surgeries a week.
“Whatever they’re doing on humans, we’re doing on dogs,” says Todd Murphy, the surgeon who operated on Larrie.
Dogs are also seen more and more as members of the family, so people are willing to pay to treat them.
“Lots of injuries occur with weekend warriors,” Hudson says. “The owners work all week, so they can’t exercise their dog every day. On the weekend they toss the Frisbee and the dog’s not prepared for it.” That’s why she recommends that dog owners walk their pets daily.
What’s different these days is how surgery patients are treated after their operations. “Just like with humans, you have to prepare these animals to go back to what they were doing before,” Hudson says.
Hudson graduated with a degree in animal science from Texas A&M University, then earned one of the first certificates in canine rehabilitation in June 2003 from the University of Tennessee. Think physical therapist, only for dogs. She works only with animals that have been referred to her by a veterinarian. And yes, that includes cats. She even gets them to walk on the underwater treadmill without much protest.
Rehab begins immediately
At the rehab center, treatment starts immediately after surgery. The animal is iced on and off for two to four days, until swelling disappears.
Then the real rehabilitation work begins. Hudson helps the animals stretch, putting the muscles through the normal range of motion without any weight. Then she introduces the treadmill, physio ball and balance board. The exercises, usually done in hour-long sessions twice a week, are designed to improve strength, endurance, range of motion and balance.
“Everything we start doing is geared at low-impact weight bearing,” Hudson says.
It’s not cheap to treat an injured pet. Knee surgery for a dog can set a pet owner back $1,800 to $2,400. Two sessions of rehab a week, at $50 a session, tacks on another $800.
Gerry Brown, who owns Larrie and five other dogs and runs the DePaw Agility Training Center in Manor, doesn’t hesitate at the cost.
“We ask an awful lot of these guys,” says Brown, who works with about 125 agility dogs and their owners at his training facility. “They’re jumping and climbing and slamming into things. There’s a lot of injuries with these dogs.”
A tour of the kennel at the rehab center shows that Larrie is hardly an isolated case. A field dog and an obedience dog in the same block of cages are both recovering from torn ACLs sustained on the job, and another agility dog is recuperating from surgery after being hit by a car.
Lucky for Larrie, the misstep on the A-frame wasn’t the end of an illustrious career, which landed her a victory at the first American Kennel Club Agility Invitational in 2000. It took six months and 26 days before Larrie was competing again. Back on the competition circuit, Brown says, Larrie is loving the races as much as ever and performing even faster than before.
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“You build this bond with a dog, and then when something happens, all you can think about is getting them fixed and comfortable again,” he says. “Without rehab, I don’t know if I ever could have gotten her back in the ring.”
Larrie, it seems, would agree. Finished with her rehab session, she springs out of the treadmill tank and bounces around the treatment room, one eye carefully trained on her owner. Quivering with enthusiasm, she can hardly sit still.
Like that injured football player and jogger, she’s ready to get back in the game.