What's a dog to do when she's had a litter and can't get back in shape? Try out a bit of canine hydrotherapy and rehabilitation, writes ROSEMARY Mac CABE
A FRIEND called me this week. She has a one-month-old baby and is whiling away her days watching soaps and eating dinners cooked by her mother. “I need to join Weight Watchers,” she tells me. “I still look pregnant.” Your baby, I tell her, is but one month old. Your body, I tell her, is adjusting. You’re being mad, I tell her (lovingly). Then I say my goodbyes and think sadly of the difficulties of being female in a world where women are valued, above all, for their aesthetics. It’d be enough to make you cry.
So it is with surprise that I learn, just two days later, that women aren’t the only victims of the obsession with the post-baby shed.
“We have a Staffordshire bull terrier coming in who had pups recently. She’s been doing a combination of swimming and the treadmill to get her figure back,” says Anne Stewart, hydrotherapist at the Canine Hydrotherapy Rehabilitation Centre in Sallins. Yes, you read correctly: this dog is going for hydrotherapy to regain its “figure”.
“She’s a top show staffy,” says Stewart. “And when she first came in, she had the big boobs and everything.” (At this point, the feeling of empathy is enough to overwhelm me.) “We even had to have her in a bigger lifejacket that would fit around her boobs!” The indignity of it all! “But now she’s swimming nicely and her weight is going down. Staffies build up fitness levels well – they love to swim. Now when she’s in the pool, she’s chasing around after a toy and having a great old time.”
The Canine Hydrotherapy Rehabilitation Centre has been open since September this year and is, according to Stewart, doing a steady trade. And when a leaflet comes in the door, it seems foolish to resist. The only issue is the lack of a dog, and into that void step Ciara Norton and Kali, her Staffordshire bull terrier, who hasn’t got boobs – nor, we will learn, does she have a grá for the water.
The theory behind the centre, Stewart explains, is to offer dogs which have experienced injury or joint problems, the opportunity to exercise in a weightless environment. The water is warm and the hydrostatic pressure increases buoyancy, “so you’re removing all of the forces that you would get on land”, says Stewart. “You don’t have the force of the legs hitting the ground, and all of the movements are slowed down – it’s much more of a controlled movement.”
There is very little control going on, however, when Kali is introduced to the water, complete with tiny orange lifejacket to aid buoyancy. Stewart, in a wetsuit (and remarkably good spirited about the whole debacle), patiently leads the dog around the pool, ignoring her desperate efforts to climb out and attempting to encourage her swimming by tossing a chew toy a few feet ahead of her. These efforts, it would seem, are futile. Kali is interested in one thing and one thing only, and that is escape.
“You do get dogs who are a bit nervous,” says Stewart. “I have one dog that comes in, a retriever, who’s very panicky – but not in a frightened way. He’s just over-excited, so he comes in for a swim and we’re teaching him to calm down and expend his excess energy.”
Kali’s energy levels are noticeably different before and after her immersion, as it were, into the world of canine hydrotherapy. Beforehand, she is alert – she refuses to lie down in the back of the car and, instead, sits upright on Ciara’s knee, deaf to her sporadic screeches as toenail and flesh collide. On the return drive, she knuckles down in the back and snores softly during the hour and a half it takes to get home.
But what benefits can dogs expect to see from this kind of therapy?
“What we get a lot of is post-operative dogs. We had one in recently that had broken its elbow and hadn’t used the leg because of that,” says Stewart. “So we got the dog to use the leg in the water when he wasn’t using it at all on land. About two weeks after they use it in the water, they will begin to use it on land. It decreases recovery time, and is a great way of expending energy – because they might have been on cage rest, there would be a lot of energy built up.”
It would be easy to consign canine hydrotherapy to that box into which we might already have placed doggy daycare (for the nine-to-fiver who can’t face the idea of doggy being home alone all day) and grooming salons for puppies (would you like a pink nail polish, or more of a fuschia?), but the science behind canine hydrotherapy is sound. And with prices starting at €35 for one session, it might be worth looking into if your dog is just a little afraid to get back in the water.
