A real treat: Dogs prove good patients at physical rehab

Breathing hard, the elderly patient limped off a treadmill in Jacquie Welkener’s physical therapy office in suburban Manchester, Mo., and sat down to rest.

Welkener leaned in close, placed a comforting hand to her client’s face and said, “Does that feel better?”

The patient responded the only way it could.

It licked Welkener on the cheek.

“That’s something that didn’t happen when I was treating people,” Welkener said, returning the affection with a peck on the head of Lakota, a 151/2 year old Red Heeler dog recovering from vestibular disease.

Welkener is a Washington University-trained physical therapist who worked for 25 years for SSM Health Care.

Some weeks ago, she treated her last human client.

She has since worked full-time as one of the few physical therapists in the area whose clientele is limited to animals, mostly dogs.

She and her business partner, Sherry Bunch, operate Healing Paws Rehabilitation. They lease office space inside Veterinary Specialty Services, an animal hospital in Manchester.

On a typical day, Welkener, 49, treats 20 dogs. She occasionally cares for cats. “But they don’t cooperate with physical therapy very well,” she said.

One afternoon last week, a steady flow of owners brought dogs to Healing Paws. There was a dachshund recovering from hip surgery, a bischon poodle with a herniated disc, an American cocker spaniel “agility dog” with lower back instability, and a big black Labrador retriever rebounding from a staph infection that almost killed it last summer.

Lakota was the old man of the group. The dog was a pup when owner, Brent Coder, 39, of south St. Louis, got him while living in Colorado.

“He’s meant a lot to me over the years,” Coder said. “He’s probably my best friend. We’ve climbed many a mountain together, many fishing trips. He goes everywhere he can with me.”

When Coder brought Lakota to Healing Paws a few weeks ago, the dog could barely stand. Vestibular disease, an ear ailment that caused vertigo, had struck the dog as it was recovering from a stroke suffered last year.

“It would just lay on the floor curved in a circle,” Coder said. “It couldn’t even straighten its head up.”

After several weeks of treatment on a treadmill in water, Lakota began to find the spring in his step.

“I’ll continue to get him the treatment he needs as long as he’s not in pain and is enjoying life,” Coder, a creative director at an advertising firm, said. “I’m not married. I don’t have kids. I do have a girlfriend. But Lakota’s my best friend and my buddy.”

Such devotion to pets helps explain why Welkener has seen the animal physical therapy business more than double since she got involved in it about 14 years ago.

For most of her career, Welkener split her work between treating people and animals.

The animal side eventually got prosperous enough that Welkener felt confident in leaving her hospital job to concentrate exclusively on Healing Paws.

The business charges clients $50 per treatment. A typical visit lasts about 45 minutes.

She and Bunch are considering opening a second location in this area.

Welkener got animal therapy training through the University of Tennessee, one of the few such institutions that offer certification in the practice.

Her experience in treating people made the animal therapy regimen seem like refresher courses.

“Aside from a couple of boney differences, the physiology of dogs and humans is very similar; dogs are just bent over and walking on four legs instead of two,” she said.

Welkener found another similarity. “Working with animals is like pediatric physical therapy. Like very young children, you can’t really reason with animals. You have to make an activity for them and then get them to do it.

“Unlike adults, you can’t tell them to raise their arms 10 times or give them exercises to do at home.”

Healing Paws’ on-site relationship with Veterinary Specialty Services adds a dimension to the hospital’s services that has greatly hastened the healing process for animals post-surgery, said the hospital’s neurosurgeon, Dr. Fred Wininger.

“Our animals are in rehab I’d argue faster than human patients with similar clinical outcomes,” Wininger said. “Healing Paws is helping us to meet the higher expectations that owners have for their pets. As human medical care advances, people want the same for their furry friends.”

And like care for humans, the cost of surgery and follow-up treatment for animals can run into many thousands of dollars.

Another of Welkener’s clients, John Murphy, of Petersburg, Ill., declined to say recently how much he has spent on surgery and rehab to help his black Lab, Ned, recover from a staph infection.

Murphy and his wife, Carol, spent plenty on gasoline alone last summer making the five-hour round trip from their farm north of Springfield, Ill., to Healing Paws.

“We drove here every single day for three months,” Murphy, 71, said.

Murphy had advice for anyone as devoted to their pet as his family is to Ned.

He said, “Get pet insurance!”

(c)2014 St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at https://www.stltoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC