Getting Started

Our Veterinarians and Certified Canine Rehabilitation Practitioners will prescribe your pet’s Rehabilitation Treatment Plan. Thanks to our many years of formal education and the successful Physical Rehabilitation of thousands of pets, we have the tools and training necessary to safely maximize your pet’s comfort and mobility. It’s not uncommon for a pet to be referred to us for a specific modality, Hydrotherapy being a particularly frequent one, when in fact that modality would not be effective or safe for that pet and only our specialized training saves that pet from inappropriate treatment.

For multiple reasons, we require that your pet be seen by their regular Veterinarian within the last year, at minimum, before coming to see us. This exam is important because it ensures that your Veterinarian has an opportunity to identify any conditions that would make Rehab unnecessary or unsafe. Some conditions are better treated with medication or surgery and some can be made worse with Rehab. We also want to make sure that your pet is up to date on vaccinations as appropriate and that any other medical conditions they have are well managed before beginning therapy. As part of preparation for your pet's appointment with us, we will request your pet's medical records so that our Medical Team can review them before meeting with you.

Having a diagnosis for your pet’s condition makes it safer for us to proceed and helps us truly tailor your pet’s Rehabilitation Plan to address their body’s deficiencies. Rehab for a dog with a torn Cranial Cruciate Ligament will be different than Rehab for a pet with a Luxating Patella despite both conditions affecting the knee. It will also help us set goals and better predict your pet’s outcome. For example, we would expect a dog with weakness of the back legs caused by aging and inactivity to improve with therapy, while a dog being treated for Degenerative Myelopathy would continue to decline, though at a slower rate than one without therapy. We treat symptoms like weakness and limping daily, but without knowing the cause for those symptoms, we’re making an educated guess and therapy could be ineffective at best, harmful at worst. Some conditions are better treated with surgery. We hope to help as many pets avoid surgery as possible, but the truth is that Rehab cannot fix everything and there are situations where surgery really is the best treatment and most efficient use of your resources. By having a diagnosis before coming to see us, you could potentially skip the cost and time of a Consultation with us and go straight to a Board-Certified Veterinary Surgeon and get your pet back on their feet that much faster.

Is that dog limping because of dysplasia or because of a bone-eating tumor? Therapy can absolutely help improve a dysplastic patient’s comfort and mobility but could fracture the bone of an Osteosarcoma patient. So how do we know if it’s safe to proceed? Imaging! Why does this dog have hind limb weakness? Is it because of spinal cord impingement caused by Intervertebral Disc Disease? Or maybe it’s a Fibrocartilaginous Embolism (aka Spinal Stroke)? It might be because Spondylosis is making certain activities painful, so the muscles of the hind legs have become weaker from disuse. How do we know what to do? Imaging! Imaging and bloodwork may not seem necessary for Rehab, but they will make therapy safer and more effective. You might bring your pet to us for one problem, but therapy affects the entire body. Chest radiographs might identify changes to your pet’s heart that could make certain exercises unsafe. Bloodwork might reveal that your pet has Hypothyroidism, which if left untreated could be a huge contributor to a pet’s excess weight and make weight loss more difficult. When pets come to see us without diagnostics and/or imaging, we often refer them back to their primary Veterinarian to have these things performed before beginning in-clinic therapy. By having these steps completed before coming to see us, you can help ensure that your pet’s Rehabilitation Plan is best suited to their needs and can begin right away. We do not perform any imaging or lab work at CROC.