Willow's Hydrotherapy and Veterinary Physiotherapy Services

23/01/2025

🐾 💦The Benefits of Canine Hydrotherapy on a Water Treadmill! 💦🐾

Hydrotherapy on a water treadmill is a fantastic way to help your dog heal, stay fit, and build strength without the impact of traditional exercise. This targeted therapy offers a range of benefits, whether your pup is recovering from surgery, managing joint issues, or simply staying active.

Why Choose a Water Treadmill?

Low-Impact Exercise – The water supports your dog’s weight, reducing stress on their joints and muscles while still providing a great workout.

Controlled Environment – The speed, water level and an incline/decline can be adjusted to match your dog’s needs and ability, ensuring a safe and effective session every time.

Rehabilitation & Recovery – Ideal for post-surgery recovery, the water treadmill helps improve gait patterning, circulation, promote healing, and rebuild strength without straining the body.

Muscle Building – It’s a fantastic way to strengthen muscles, especially in dogs dealing with arthritis or hip dysplasia.

Whether it's for recovery or maintenance, the water treadmill helps dogs feel better, move better, and live their best lives! 🐕💦

21/01/2025

This lovely lady 🩷 certainly enjoyed her first session with us today 💦 She may have got a little carried away with the peanut butter 🙃 Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? 😏

Kona has started to slow down a little over the last 12 months. Nothing major but Mum wants to be proactive and help Kona as best she can into her senior years 🐶

07/01/2025

This beautiful boy🩵has been coming for hydrotherapy💦 to help prepare him for surgery on his hips 🐾

Hydrotherapy can be really beneficial for patients waiting for surgery as it can help delay/prevent further muscle loss. We can also address on-going compensatory issues, making their recovery and return to normal life/function easier 🐾

05/01/2025

My own golden oldie enjoying the snow this morning ❄️

Let’s see everyone’s fun in snow this morning ⛄️

04/01/2025

We absolute love a golden oldie here ⭐️ This lovely lady gave everyone a scare late last year. It’s so lovely to have her back in clinic and back in the treadmill for treatment ⚡️💦

03/01/2025

This lovely soul is Hope🩷 she has been coming for treatment since October after suffering from a long term limp on her forelimb. Initially Hope had a course of laser⚡️ treatment and then began hydrotherapy 💦 treatment.

She has made fantastic progress since starting. Hope was unable to mange a simple short walk when she first started with us, she is now out for up to 15 minutes a walk - and loving it 😊 🐾

30/12/2024

What a great success story

FLYNNS STORY 🩵

By Flynns owner - a bit of a read but totally worth it!

“Flynn developed an ear infection about 2 years ago and had numerous rounds of antibiotics which went on for at least 9 months. After it finally cleared up he developed awful diarrhoea which we treated with over the counter medication but nothing helped so we took him to the vets she was very concerned about his weight loss and did a blood test on him the results came back that he had very low vitamin B and albumin levels and because of this she thought that he probably had liver cancer. so she did a scan and it came back clear all she could find was seriously inflamed colon so he was put on steroids. At first when he was on 4 tablets his diarrhoea cleared up but as the vet tried to reduce the dose it returned and he never got below 2 tablets and even at that dose he wasn’t well some days he had awful cramps as well as severe diarrhoea and some days he was sick. He was still losing weight going from 25kg and plummeting to 15.1Kg. Every month he went to the vets he had lost weight and continued to be unwell all that was advised was to increase his steroid dose In desperation we decided to try changing his food and while we were researching and trying different foods we found out that it was the months of antibiotics that had destroyed the necessary pre and pro biotic in his stomach. Eventually he was put on Pooch and Mutt gastrointestinal kibble and gut guard tablets and there was a slight improvement although he still had regular bouts of diarrhoea and cramps and he was on 3-4 steroids a day. 4 weeks ago after a conversation with Amy about the new laser treatment she was about to start she said she thought it would help with Flynns problem, so we started to treat him twice a week. After the first treatment his poo improved and he hasn’t had cramps for weeks now and he’s only on 2 steroids which I am hoping to reduce even more over the next few weeks and his weight is slowly rising again he now weighs 16.3kg”

When I bought the laser I only had the intentions of treating orthopaedic and neurological conditions. I never thought we could help dogs like Flynn! He improved after his first session producing a solid poo for the first time in months and had not only gained a kg in 4 weeks but he has stopped having severe diarrhoea and cramps and waking his owner up all through the nights and most of all he’s much happier in himself.

I love my job 🩵

Please share Flynns story and maybe together we can help more dogs like Flynn.

Thank you for reading.

Companion Animal Health Emily Ashdown RVN - Veterinary Rehab and Industry Coaching

24/12/2024

That’s a wrap🎄We are officially closed now until the 28th of December. All messages, calls and emails will be responded to then. We are taking a well earned break ☺️

May I take this opportunity to thank everyone for entrusting us with their pets and for another fantastic year. I would also like to thank all the lovely proactive vets who have been recommending and referring to us all year 🌟

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year love all the team at Willows 🐶

12/12/2024

A Friendly Reminder About Our Cancellation Policy

As the Christmas season is upon us, our schedule is busier than ever, and we’re doing everything we can to ensure everyone gets the appointments they need.

We kindly remind our valued customers of our 48-hour cancellation policy. Last-minute cancellations or no-shows make it difficult for us to accommodate others who are waiting for appointments, especially during this hectic time.

While we’d prefer not to enforce our policy, repeated last-minute changes may require us to do so to ensure fairness for everyone.

Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you soon!

08/12/2024

The list is endless….

06/12/2024

Lovely little trio that have been visiting us weekly ☺️

01/12/2024

It’s December, I am officially allowed to mention Christmas 🎄

Our diaries are extremely busy so please ensure you all have your appointments booked in 😊 We will have a very limited number of appointments available in between Christmas & New Year. I highly recommend booking this now to avoid disappointment.

I know everyone is extremely busy over the Christmas period, however please can I ask everyone to consider us 🙃, who work very hard to ensure everyone gets an appointment. It makes it difficult (and frustrating at times) when we get last minute changes or no shows over the Christmas period.

I hope everyone has a lovely December and enjoys the build up to The big day 🎅🎄

28/11/2024

Great post about using treats to reinforce wanted behaviours

When you've got a puppy (or are actively training) you go through a lot of treats. We all know that!

Dogs will value different reinforcers in different ways. These values are NOT static! They may be dependent on or influenced by the environment; by the dog's emotional or physical state (ie full!); and by how recently and how much they've had that particular reinforcer.

This is why I always rotate rewards, especially for my dogs in training.

I spent £2.79 on treats today, and came away with 125g of tasty minis, which didn't actually seem that tasty imo, and 250g of hot dogs. The hotdogs were also only £1 of my purchase so worked out quiiiiiite a bit better 'bang for my buck'.

These are also massively different in terms of reward value for my dogs. Whilst dogs do have different preferences, I have yet to meet a dog who will turn their nose up at a hot dog or squeeze cheese (IYKYK 😉) in favour of a 'tasty mini' or similar. My dogs chose the hot dogs every time!

When you're building value in a behaviour, you need to choose a reinforcer that's right for the behaviour that you want, in the context that you want. Spice needs high value rewards for check ins, loose lead walking and recall as if left to his own devices he'd quite like to hunt instead. It has to be worth it to him! But if I reached for the hot dogs every time, he would actually start getting bored of them.

Think about it: if you had your favourite chocolate every day, constantly, for any and every thing that you did... how many days would you go before you couldn't actually stand the taste of that? And what about those days you don't want *that* particular chocolate but you do want this other chocolate? Or maybe its a crisp day instead?!

So we have lower value reinforcers for environments and behaviours that are easier for him; such as building calmness in the vet waiting room, which he already understands. And higher value reinforcers for environments and behaviours that don't come so naturally; such as choosing me over the environment itself.

27/11/2024

I do love to break up the day with a cat cuddle 🥰 This handsome chap popped in for a laser ⚡️session. As the colder months are setting in, like many pets he was getting a little stiff and hesitant at times to jump 🐈

27/11/2024

25/11/2024

This lovely (bossy 😂) little girl comes to visit us weekly to help her manage symptoms she gets from having Hip Dysplasia. She has come on leaps and bounds out on her walks and at home 🤩💦🐾

24/11/2024

22/11/2024

This lovely little girl 🩷 was referred to us for rehabilitation treatment after she had undergone spinal surgery. She has been on quite a journey and has had to completely learn how to walk again 🐾

She is now able to walk again and is at a stage where she is back out on her walks with her dog pals and has even had a few a little runs 🙂⚡️💦 She has definitely been a team effort between the vets, us, Mum, Dad and of course Grandad 🤩