Laser Therapy

trini gilmore said:
Ann, has your vet mentioned stem cell therapy to treat severe canine arthritis? Our vets started using this 2 years ago and have had truly wonderful results. Here is a link to info on this on their website:

Burnt Hills Veterinary Hospital - Veterinarian In Burnt Hills, NY USA :: Stem
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You should talk to an ortho vet before doing stem cells. It's been here for some years and I was going to try it with Deska. The ortho vet said there was no point getting it with the fragmented coronoid process, esp not with the fragments still in there. When he had the fragments removed I looked into it again but didn't find any evidence showing 'mechanical' changes, only evidence based on owner opinions. So I decided I wouldn't put him through surgery for something unknown.

Ann - do you know what sort of arthritis? There are 3 types of elbow arthritis. If it's that bad at her age and it's bilateral she must have had elbow dysplasia. Is the laser therapy like laser acupuncture?
 
All they said was that it's osteo arthritis, Caro. My vet said it's been there for a while and must have been genetic and he did mention dysplasia. This is all new to me and I don't know much about it. I am going to try and check with her breeder who I haven't talked to in years and see if there's any history in her line of this.

I don't know what laser acupuncture is -- we only have traditional acupuncture here. This is a simple process though. Pixie lays on her back on the floor between my legs because that's where she's most comfortable and they pass a shielded laser back and forth on her legs. It takes about 10 minutes.
 
I flyball teammate has some she uses on her Chocolate Lab that has some hereditary back issues that she has found out about. It seems to have helped a bunch and she says Sadie will flop down like laser me :biggrin2:
 
Oh Ann! I'm so sorry to hear about Pixie!:( I haven't been online much today and completely missed this thread. Hugs and lots of prayers to you and your baby girl!:hugs
 
corbinam said:
Laser therapy is very popular in the agility community. We have friends that carry around portable lasers to trials in case of any incident.

In fact, at a trial last year Lexi fell off the dogwalk. She seemed okay, but with a long weekend ahead of her we had a friend use their laser on her to prevent too much soreness/stiffness.
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Would you happen to know which particular devices people are finding useful?
The ones I am familiar even Laser IIIB costs around 7K to my knowledge and nevermind class IV, it is only viable to get for business purposes. I would like to know which are the ones that get good reviews from agility community.
 
I have to say that I am quite often amazed at the things that come up in the discussions here at SN. For example, I never thought about laser therapy in dogs until I read about it here. However, I know that lasers are used extensively in human medical treatment, so it is no surprise that they would be used with canines or other animals.

All that being said, the idea of me allowing "someone I met at a dog show" to administer laser treatments to my companion is a bit foreign to me. Just to give you a frame of reference, I am not unfamiliar with lasers and some of their properties. As a certified Industrial Safety Engineer, I have worked with and around lasers for years. For the last 10+ years of my employment at a major American automobile manufacturing facillity, I was the LSO (Laser Safety Officer) for a 6000+ employee manufacturing plant and the consultant to our 2000+ employee allied plant. I am not an expert on lasers, but I am trained in their industrial operations as well as appropriate methods of accident/injury avoidance. Again, I would not allow someone I met along the way (without documented credentials) access to my pet with a laser. But that's just me.
 
On that we agree. The only good news that most lasers carried by agility people are not powerful enough to do much damage:smile2: nor they adequate to help either:no:
 
I was incredibly skeptical and still am to some degree but the teammate is generally a stable person and swears by it (and her dog did seem to respond) Though I wonder if a regular hot pad would have the same effect. The 'science' does not make sense to me though I could be missing something. Sometimes 'laser' is just a marketing tool.
 
SheepOfBlue said:
I was incredibly skeptical and still am to some degree but the teammate is generally a stable person and swears by it (and her dog did seem to respond) Though I wonder if a regular hot pad would have the same effect. The 'science' does not make sense to me though I could be missing something. Sometimes 'laser' is just a marketing tool.
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Personally, I could conceive of some benefit of lasers in the manner folks are suggesting. It would depend (in my opinion) on the laser medium, power and the knowledge of the practitioner. Several people have suggested that their dogs have derived some benefit from their use and I don't question that suggestion. My worry is that if the beam is powerful enough to show positive results, it is also powerful enough to produce negative consequences if not properly used. I would want only highly trained folks using the laser if that is the choice of therapy I chose. Bear in mind, I don't know anything about how folks are using the laser in canine therapy, my knowledge is in lasers in general.
 
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