Laurie's Blogs.

Hi Laurie

I have a rehabber-friend that just contacted me about rehabbing a dog with bilateral OCD lesions in his shoulders. A surgeon performed surgery, but did not provide a protocol to follow, and will not return calls to my rehabber-friend either. The owner of the dog and the rehabber I know are too many states away from the surgical practice for it to be practical to rehab there.  And, I feel that they are profoundly conservative in other post-surgical rehab protocols that I have had the pleasure of treating.  I have never rehabbed a post OCD surgery dog, and so I’m not sure where the pitfalls might lie. 

So...

The rehabber-friend contacted me. She is a CCRP, so only familiar with you by name, and through the Animal Rehab Chat Group and CCRT ravings.  

Can you, in general terms, give us/her a timeline to follow:  Examples of how soon the dog can go back to UWTM work? Strengthening work and endurance work? 

The dog has been clinically sound with full ROM since about 2 weeks post surgery, but is wasting away from lack of muscle use in every other part of his body!   The owner and rehabber are both sure this is not right.  

Can you help us? I appreciate any insight.

Thanks,

K...

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Hey K...,

Nice to hear from you!!  I’ll see what I can do to help. 

So, with an OCD surgery... OCD out, curettage the area, ’scab’ forms - hardens.  Done.  Thus, the primary concern you have (outside of any routine surgical risks) is ’packing out’ of the ’scab’... as such, the best plan for conservation of the ‘scab’ (that I have heard from a surgeon in my class once), is to protect the joint for the initial 2-months post op - avoiding heavy activity - jumping, running, playing, rough-housing.   

I’d say ‘okay’ to any modalities (to decrease inflammation, & promote healing of cartilage), any static exercises (weight shifting, 3-leg stands - progress to X-leg stands, balance ex, E-stim in standing, etc), and any amount of walking (leash) that does not make the dog more lame than how he went out - Pick an arbitrary number to begin with.  (Maybe 5 - 10 minutes to start)... and increase a minute or so every 2 - 3 days if all is okay.  Oh, and some light joint compressions, ROM, etc are fine... and have the owners do stretches throughout as well. 

When you hit that 2 month mark - go ahead and work on more strenuous exercise – gradually of course: (weave poles, jumps, tug of war, ’burst’ retrieves (i.e. retrieve from a stand - short distance to begin), 5 mins off leash to start (with no friends - progress time before adding friends), digging.) 

It’s hard to be more specific about timelines without seeing the dog - but essentially you are out of the acute stage by the sounds of it.  You are now subacute – by my estimation – you don’t say the time frame in your e-mail... so the trial and error of exercise is simply to find what the dog can do safely, and progress from THAT point, until the magical 2-MONTH mark whereby you have more freedom (i.e. nothing from the surgery will get wrecked) and so you are just building muscle and coordination at that time. 

I hope this helps!  All the best!

Laurie