19/12/2025
🐾 Molly 🐾
Wonderful to see the lively Molly back in our Bayswater clinic .physio yesterday!
She is full full of energy in clinic, full of life and joi de vivre!
Molly sustained a horrible forelimb fracture back in August (very similar circumstances to our own Matt's fracture in November last year!). When we first saw her back in October she was struggling to weight bear on the affected limb and was getting a little too good at hopping.
With physiotherapy, both land and water based (hands on!), we were able to address this. She has since improved further with removal of one of her two implants, thank you to her team !
She does have quite a bit of muscle atrophy around her shoulder girdle and scapular musculature, so we have her 'gym program' up and running now to address this and hopefully get her back to moving well and limp free.
🏋♂️ Did you know that land based exercises, daily exercises, are REALLY important as part of your dog's rehabilitation journey? We need gravity and body weight to stimulate muscle development - enough stimulus to challenge the body to respond and build back up its muscles again, and this takes time and consistency with getting the exercises done.
Hydrotherapy is a great tool, but should never replace the basics of strength training on land!
🎯 We need to be specific - what muscles need to be targeted? Understand the biomechanics and what the body needs to be able to do to manage functional tasks without resorting to suboptimal movement patterns that in the long term won't be helpful for the body.
🦴 We need to think not just about now, but what the joints will need in 2, 5, 10 years from now to maintain a healthy and functional life, that is, to be able to get up independently, walk outside to toilet independently, go for a walk and HAVE some FUN! What we choose to do, or not do today, matters.
No shortcuts!
Well done Molly! 🥳
