My
name is Danielle. In January 2006 my 18 month old Shih Tzu Tia slipped
and damaged her cruciate ligament. She was referred for 6 weeks
of canine hydrotherapy. Here is our personal account of Tia's hydrotherapy
sessions.
Session 1
To be quite honest I found it a bit distressing actually. I have
noticed that dogs tend to either love or hate water - like marmite.
Tia hates water and so when she got into the pool with the hydrotherapist
and with her life jacket on you could see she was very panicked
and was thrashing about an awful lot. Then you could hear her breathing
becoming very fast and I must say as an owner sitting at the corner
of the pool watching your dog in this state I found it extremely
upsetting.
I don’t know whether it was worse because I was sitting in
front of her as she was trying to swim to me constantly or whether
it was a good thing as it may have made her work harder but the
whole time I really had to fight the urge to pick her up out of
the pool and cuddle her. But I’m confident that with time
she will grow accustomed to it.
It was an added bonus that Tia usually takes part in a lot of agility
training as the hydrotherapist was impressed with her fitness levels
- they use hydrotherapy alongside diets for overweight dogs which
is good as well.
Hydrotherapy can be expensive though. I pay £22 per session,
lasting 1/2 hour of which the maximum the dog will swim for to begin
with is 4 minutes! But then they do some massages to help the dog’s
muscles and they also shower and blow dry them.
You would most definitely need transport as generally dogs can't
walk very far afterwards - they are wobbly on their feet like we
are after running cross country.
Other than that, we will have to see how our next session goes.
Danielle and Tia
Session 2 |
