Hi Laurie,
I have a couple of patient groups that I have been reflecting over case management with in order to improve my practice. I would really appreciate your thoughts/wisdom/suggestions here.
MPL - Many of the breeds I see with this condition are dogs that are not particularly amenable to a lot of touch/contact by their owners, and yet they have at times moderate to marked myofascial tightness of the hip adductors, pectineus, medial thigh musculature and fascia due to longstanding MPL. While I encourage a lot of massage to the affected muscles, hip flexor and adductor stretching, and rehabilitation exercises, I would welcome your thoughts. Particularly I have questions around whether I should be adopting some other strategies to focus on activation of the lateral thigh muscles (so that the medial thigh muscle pull is potentially reduced), whether patella mobilisations would be helpful, and if you use any other strategies to help reduce myofascial tightness in the medial thigh muscles - light heat packs (at baby temp) has been a strategy I have suggested prior to massage but this is a sensitive area of the body and not always well tolerated.
Kindest Regards,
KG
MPL questions
Re: MPL questions
Hi K,
So first off, it sounds to me like you are really doing right by these dogs. Not sure I can add a whole lot more! But, let me see what I can come up with (???).
So, MPL - I chuckled at your comment about the MPL dogs tending to be ‘low touch tolerant’! Rather funny - and your right, often true!
Lets see, you can do static balance exercise and use theraband to get the dog to resist in ways that activate the lateral muscles (lat quads & biceps fem) - i.e. pull the limb medially, so the dog resists laterally. Also, you can try side stepping on a land treadmill (front feet on a platform or peanut off the the side of the land treadmill and rear feet ON treadmill, then turn on at slow slow speed, and just feed the little land-shark to get it to stay in place! (ha ha).
You can try patellar mobs, but I don’t think you can outmatch the medial pull… so I’m not sure it has much of a functional impact… unless it is to reposition a grade 2 MPL before exercising.
I also like to stretch sartorius, as I think Sartorius is what pulls dog patellas Medially… Fortunately, sartorius gets a bit of a stretch with just hip extension - so simply giving cookies on the stairs might be beneficial!
Okay, there you go!
Cheers,
Laurie
So first off, it sounds to me like you are really doing right by these dogs. Not sure I can add a whole lot more! But, let me see what I can come up with (???).
So, MPL - I chuckled at your comment about the MPL dogs tending to be ‘low touch tolerant’! Rather funny - and your right, often true!
Lets see, you can do static balance exercise and use theraband to get the dog to resist in ways that activate the lateral muscles (lat quads & biceps fem) - i.e. pull the limb medially, so the dog resists laterally. Also, you can try side stepping on a land treadmill (front feet on a platform or peanut off the the side of the land treadmill and rear feet ON treadmill, then turn on at slow slow speed, and just feed the little land-shark to get it to stay in place! (ha ha).
You can try patellar mobs, but I don’t think you can outmatch the medial pull… so I’m not sure it has much of a functional impact… unless it is to reposition a grade 2 MPL before exercising.
I also like to stretch sartorius, as I think Sartorius is what pulls dog patellas Medially… Fortunately, sartorius gets a bit of a stretch with just hip extension - so simply giving cookies on the stairs might be beneficial!
Okay, there you go!
Cheers,
Laurie
LAURIE EDGE-HUGHES