Before You Arrive
Before your first hydrotherapy session, we need to receive a referral form from your veterinary practice to ensure that your pet is suitable for hydrotherapy. This needs to be sent to your vet to be completed before you make your first appointment. We will also request a copy of your patient’s full medical history to accompany your referral form. This will give us a better level of understanding of your pets history and can help us understand all of their needs.
Getting Started
When you arrive for your first session, your hydrotherapist will assess your pet and select the most appropriate form of therapy to meet their needs. This might be swimming in the hydrotherapy pool or on the treadmill, or a combination of the two.
Before your pet gets in the water, they are showered to ensure that they are clean and avoid contaminating the water for other patients. Showering also gets the pet accustomed to the water temperature and helps to ready their muscles for the swim.
Our Hydrotherapy Pool
Our hydrotherapy pool has constantly warm water circulating at a controlled temperature of 30C to ensure your pet remains warm and comfortable throughout their swim.
There is a ramp into the pool allowing even dogs lacking in mobility easy access and rest areas suited to both small and longer legged patients so any pet has an easy place to take a breather while they swim. For the fitter pets we have jets which increase water resistance.
No pet ever gets in the pool without wearing one of our special pet life jackets. They are always accompanied by one of our hydrotherapy team to ensure that they always swim safely.
Our Treadmill
The treadmill is especially useful for rehabilitation of pets after operations. Its glass walls allow us to look very closely at the way pets are using their legs and adjust their programme according to what we can see.
It is useful for dogs of all sizes as the water level can be varied to suit the needs of each pet and to apply different levels of resistance to individual joints. The speed of the treadmill can also be adjusted to encourage pets to get into a healthy walking pattern.
After Swimming
After their session, each pet is showered to remove the swimming pool water from their fur and either towel dried or blow dried using one of our special animal driers. Please be prepared to keep your pet warm on the way home as they may remain slightly damp and must not get chilly, so please bring a blanket or coat with you to the session so they can stay warm on their way home.
