A lot of dogs love water and that's proving helpful at Purdue University's Small Animal Hospital.
Vets there are using a new water treadmill to help pets recover after surgery.
Similar therapy has proven helpful for humans who've been injured. And it's a much tougher workout than doggy paddling.
Physical Therapy Hardest Part Of Recovery
Michael Hiles' chocolate lab Charlie is going on 13 years old, but she's young at heart.
"She loves to play, she's all about the play and she's very energetic and excited," Hiles says.
It was that playing that proved problematic one day. Charlie was chasing a hawk outside and came back to the house with a bad limp. She somehow damaged her calcaneal tendon.
Vets at Purdue tried to correct the injury with early rehab, but Charlie continued to struggle.
She would favor the repaired leg, she wouldn't put hardly any weight on it.
Micha Simmons is one of the vets at Purdue's Small Animal Hospital who tried to correct the injury with early rehab, but Charlie continued to struggle.
"In Charlie's case, we had been following a core lesion, a small hole that was developing in that tendon and unfortunately rather than getting smaller it was continuing to expand," says veterinarian Micha Simmons.
So Charlie went in for surgery – and that was the easy part.
The real challenge is her recovery.
"She would favor the repaired leg, she wouldn't put hardly any weight on it," Hiles says. "We had to do some weight exercises where we had her shift her weight and that kind of thing, but she still just wouldn't use it."
How A Water Treadmill Works
To help correct the issue, vets decided to use a new water treadmill as part of Charlie's physical therapy routine.
Charlie enters the treadmill, then warm water rises up underneath her.
It usually takes a little prodding and encouragement from Registered Vet Technician Jessica Bowditch for Charlie to know what to do next, but she eventually starts slowly walking against the resistance of the water.
The hospital uses the treadmill for dogs recovering from orthopedic and neurological surgeries, as well as those who struggle with arthritis.
"The more I raise the water, the more buoyancy the dog has in order to kind of take some weight off the limbs and try to use it more," Bowditch says. "Because then it's less pain and it's just really nice for the buoyancy."
The more I raise the water, the more buoyancy the dog has in order to kind of take some weight off the limbs and try to use it more.
For Charlie, the goal was to get her to stop favoring her uninjured leg and return to her normal walking pattern.
"A lot of time her back limb at the beginning she would really just let it float and then just come down and then it would float again," Bowditch says.
The water treadmill helps dogs build up their strength and can even prove as an effective weight loss tool for those struggling with extra weight. It's more effective than walking dogs on land.
"I think it's something like ten times as resistant as air," says Director of Physical Therapy Stephanie Thomovsky. "Basically that resistance is great because it then allows you to with each step of your limb build muscle mass faster in a shorter period of time."
The rehab process can take months – for Charlie it's been nearly a year. And vets thinks she's about 95 percent recovered.
They're starting to see that old, playful Charlie come back.
"She's got her run back, she didn't have that before," Hiles says. "She was really a gimpy dog and now she's not."
Vets can use the equipment to help with rehab for cats, but they haven't tested that out yet.
