Hydrotherapy for Dachshund with back problems
Many Dachshund owners have gone through the heartache of
attending to one of their loved pet after having a slipped disc in their backs (IVD or Intervertebral Disc Disease). If a dog still has deep pain refexes, also called toe pinch reflexes, surgery is the best option to remove the disc material that is putting pressure on the spinal cord. Often owners can not afford the very expensive surgery, so medical management is their only option. Steroids (cortisone) and anti-inflammatry drugs are the most commonly used medications. Strict cage rest (a baby playpen is good) is highly recommended to prevent the dog from becoming too active as they feel better and further injuring their backs.
Another valuable tool to use on these IVD cases is called hydrotherapy. This consists of placing the dog in a bathtub with very warm water drawn to the level where it just covers the dog_s back with you supporting the dog_s tummy and its feet just barely touching the tub_s bottom. Then you just raise and lower the dog so that the warm water washes gently over the back. A dog_s normal response when their feet touch the bottom of the tub is to push back with their feet. The heat, the buoyancy of the water and the pushing of the feet helps to exercise the back muscles and reduce inflammation in the spinal cord. It helps most every patient in their recovery from this debilitating disease. It does not help those dogs that have no reflexes. Those dogs usually have so much damage already done to the spinal nerve tissue that nothing helps.
I have sent some of the dog_s with IVD to a chiropractor (not all human chiropractors will work on a dog) and with manipulation and electrostimulation therapy I have seen some positive results. Those dogs all still had the toe pinch reflex, however. That seems to be the key thing.
We have all been blessed with doggy kisses from our beloved pets but often we are taken aback at the horrible bad breath that some dogs have. This odor comes from bacteria that grow within the plaque and tartar that accumulates on the dog_s teeth. As in humans, some individual dogs have more problems with dental disease than others. Just as some humans need a teeth cleaning more often than every 6 months, and some every several year; dogs have the same dental problems.
If a dog has a moderate amount of tartar on their teeth, a thorough teeth cleaning and polishing of the teeth should be done before starting the pulse therapy. It is called pulse therapy because anibiotics are used in a "pulse" method, that is, given for short periods once a month. Clindamycin and Clavamox are the two most commoly used antibiotics for pulse therapy, and I prefer the Clindamycin. It actually gets into the tooth and bones of the dog.
I also recommend a complete blood count and profile, especially on older dogs (7 years or older), because chronic dental disease can have a detrimental effect on the heart and kidneys. These older dogs with heart or kidney problems will benefit greatly from using pulse therapy on them.
Ultrasound denistry is commonly done on our pets now and it gently removes the tartar and heavy plaque and flushes them away. In a badly infected mouth, we use an antiseptic solution as the rinse instead of water. This rinses the teeth and gums during the whole procedure. Administration of antibiotics after the procedure will help remove the bad bacteria from the mouth. In most cases, the bacteria eventually comes back, so to lessen the effects of this, we recommend repeating the antibiotics for five (5) days each month. This is especially useful in older dogs that we don't want to sedate for the denistry too often. This method of treating "bad breath in dogs" has worked will for me. Additional help can be gotten by brushing the dog's teeth once a week and providing good chew toys.
We have used this method of treating chronic gingivitis for several years now and with a good amount of success.
