Laurie's Blogs.

There is a trend for dog owners to go online to ask question about their dog – seeking sometimes what seems to be medical advice.  A colleague of mine posted the following question, asking about this, and more to the point why people were doing this and what they felt they were missing from their vet, surgeon, or rehab professional.  Here’s the question again:

As a Canine Rehabilitation Professional, I have a question for you guys that take your dog to see a rehab pro. I'm seeing an increasing number of questions here about exercises / techniques / rehab plans that have been given to you by a rehab professional. I'm feeling that if you are having to ask here, there is a problem with the quality of advice you have been given by your professional. So, tell me why you post here instead of contacting your professional. As Canine Rehab Professionals, where are we going wrong that you aren't contacting us??

Stella Barnett, Diploma Canine Rehabilitation, BSc (hons) Physiotherapy

I asked Stella if I could share her question and the responses to make it into a blog post.  She was cool with it, so here it is.  

Essentially the answers could be divided into 3 categories.  Have a read of the answers below:


No access to a Canine Rehab Professional / Surgeon’s post-op recommendations were insufficient

• Very little rehab help from the vet
• Hard to find a rehab specialist
• No post-op help from regular vet.  
• Insufficient post-op rehab advice from specialist
• Questions to clinic / at clinic are filtered through the tech who may know nothing about rehab 
• no one at the surgery center advised me on rehab. No one at my regular vet advised me on rehab. I had to do all my own research and call around to see who had a water treadmill and other equipment. I felt like the veterinarians did not guide me properly.
• Crate rest alone isn’t helping anyone!
• finding the right professional isn't easy.
• There are also many orthopaedic surgeons and even vets give a one size fits all rehab plan to owners with a book and no help in how to do that
• The first 2 it was kinda sink or swim on your own other than: "leash walk and crate rest for x weeks"
• The discharge advise I was given was perplexing for me, let alone anyone who has no idea. In addition, getting the specific details of the operation from the surgeon didn’t happen until I had the follow-up consult. There is certainly a need for better support in this area

Prefer to ask peers

• To see if there is something else they could be doing.
• To do research before their specialist appointment
• I prefer to ask broad questions about continuing care/exercise after rehab has been completed so I'm not constantly pestering my rehab vet.
• I value the comments as a "second" opinion
• Additional guidance when something isn’t explained well enough or full/part of the explanation is forgotten (there usually is a lot going on), and also convenience as it’s a fast response vs waiting for the professional.
• People often feel more comfortable asking peers. They don’t like to “bother” their vet or don’t want to sound stupid.

Rehab practitioner is lacking in some capacity

• Most rehab vets and techs deal predominantly with pet dogs and owners who are not dog trainers.
• Rehab certification programs lack teaching of therapeutic exercise and behaviour / training and therefore don’t understand how to prescribe ther ex.
• Most of them have no idea how to split behaviors, how to lure, how to capture. They use a program that populates exercises for the problem and they expect the owner to figure out how to teach them.  Many just use the same old exercises.
• Rehabilitation expert is unaware of how to train a dog and owner team or simply does not have the time.
• My rehab vet is brilliant at telling me what exercises to do, but offers no training help to actually carry them out, and I'm not sure understands the concept of splitting to train. This group has been great for ideas to train the exercises.
• I have seen several Rehab Vets along the way. In my experience the majority 1) did not show me how to get my dog to do the exercise (think caveletti's at a walk for an agility dog) and how to perform it properly 2) don't provide a written plan so you forget as soon as you get home.
• Some of the "Pro's" that I have been too have no idea how to get an agility dog to slow down
• Dog does sports and want to get back to it after surgery
• It frustrates me that there is not a broader understanding of behaviour management in dogs
• Schools and courses have so much technical information to teach that they many times fall short of helping their students learn effective communication.
• Personally, I love material handed out or shown on video. It is so easy as a client to become overloaded with new info. and there is the embarrassment ( in some cases) of asking your professional to go over things again so it is easier at 11 pm to go to Facebook to ask. You could ask your clients for follow up videos of how they are progressing at home?
• More canine rehab people need to actually learn about sports and activities a bit more.
• The rehab veterinarian I saw who was local to me was not an experienced dog trainer... Nor a biomechanics specialist... And had no experience with anything but untrained pet dogs.
• I think sometimes people are afraid to ask questions/take up too much time during an appointment.
• I believe this group provides some excellent visual breakdowns and items to watch for which may be missed during by the owner during a rehab session.
• My vet rehab team now leverages videos vs pictures
• The dog was taken in the back and PT was done to it. I was sent home with photo copies of exercises. I actually thought I was doing them correctly. I had no idea what my dog needed.
• I didn't know what was wrong or how to present to the rehab person what was going on. Nor did I know how to ask about specialists.
• The rehab itself was exceptional and the info was also exceptional but as for setting up an exercise program and following up with more exercises really wasn’t.
• Even rehab vets do not have enough knowledge about dog sports to understand the physical conditioning needed, and sometimes do not know how to teach clients to execute the exercises correctly.
• I feel there are very few rehab professionals that are also dog trainers
• Fire hose of information. That's exactly how I felt at my appointment... Trying to take in all kinds of information... Maybe too much information.

So, what should we learn from this? 

1. 
Either we need more rehab practitioners or more rehab practitioners should be available via distance consultation
2. More surgeons need to be referring to rehab practitioners.  Therefore, we should do what we can to market to the surgeons so that we’re not being forgotten.  (Yes, I recognize that this is sometimes easier said than done.)  So, if the surgeons aren’t referring, then we need to be better at marketing directly to the public to let them know that we are out there and what we have to offer.
3. We need to do a better job of educating our dog owners in how to do an exercise.
4. We need to learn how to get dogs to do the exercises we need to do (learn how to be dog trainers of a sort).
5. We need to communicate better.  Learn how to teach owners to do their home exercises.  
6. Use video.

Interesting!  I’ll let you think about this and see if there are areas that you need to boost your skills and learning in regards to exercise prescription!



On that note, cheers to a great week ahead!


Laurie