Meet Echo

When Echo was 4 years old, she started avoiding jumps in agility or would actually just plow through them. She was taken to a chiropractic vet and each time would feel great for a week or so and then would go back to blowing the jumps.

A specialist was consulted and it was discovered that Echo has degenerative lumbo-sacral stenosis. She especially showed the effects in her right hind leg. During play time with the other family dogs, she often slipped when trying to push off from her hind end and demonstrated difficulty when trying to get up from lying down.

Echo was pulled from agility and began rehabilitation. She often was “crabby” with the other dogs in the home, most likely due to her feeling the weakness in her hind end.
She began working on her core through exercises on the therapy balls, especially the large peanut, weight bearing and weight shifting exercises to help build up her muscles in her hind end and also build up her confidence.

Aqua therapy was also a very big part of Echo’s rehab – at the time we did not have access to an underwater treadmill but did have access to a pool and several ponds and lakes. Echo loves to swim so we did this as much as possible.

Echo is a very hard working dog and loves to use her body in challenging ways so she took to therapy quite easily. She began building muscle in her hind end, especially her right hind leg. As she built muscle, she also built her confidence up and became happy once again and was no longer “crabby” with her house mates.

Because her condition is degenerative, Echo continues with therapy but on a maintenance level. She utilizes the underwater treadmill at least once a week and also continues to work on her core muscles. She also continues to be seen by a chiropractic vet to keep her aligned and feeling good.