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Is your dog a working dog, performance dog, hunting dog, or a very active pet? Having grown up with hunting dogs and trained in protection sport (PSA and Schutzhund), dock diving, herding, therapy work, agility, carting, disc, and other canine sports with her own dogs, Dr. Jones understand that the needs of a canine athlete may be different. In addition to attending lectures and seminars with some of the most renowned experts in canine orthopaedics and sports medicine, she has also received additional training in rehabilitation at the University of Tennessee, the only academic veterinary rehabilitation certifiying institution, and in medical massage therapy from Colorado State University.
Whether your dog is a high level elite canine athlete or a dedicated jogging buddy, we use a holistic approach to keep your canine athlete performing their best. This includes:
- Diet: High quality nutrition is extremely important for the canine athlete. From commercial diets to home prepared diets, we can make recommendations based on the individual needs of your dog, including formulating a complete and balanced diet for your dog or your whole kennel. See the Nutrition page for more information.
- Puppy and Young Dog Development: In almost every venue, owners want to start their young pup right away in their chosen activity. We can develop a plan to maximize training for your activity of choice while minimize the risk of injury to growing dogs.
- Conditioning: It's been said that championships are won in the off season. Whether doing pre-season conditioning for competition or coming off an injury or surgery, two weeks of rest requires approximately eight weeks to regain full conditioning! We can design a personalized program for you and your dog to bring them to peak conditioning depending on the sport or activity for maximum performance.
- Pre-exercise Stretching and Warmups: Human athletes know the importance of stretching, warm ups, and cool downs. Dogs also benefit from warming up and stretching before they exercise or about to perform, particularly if they are doing high impact activities like protection, agility, dock diving, and disc. Proper cool downs can also prevent soreness as well as life threatening conditions like heat exhaustion or gastric dilation and volvulus (GDV or "bloat"). We can show you simple stretches after a warm up before your dog competes to improve their performance and safety during training competition.
- Medical Massage Therapy: Because dogs cannot tell us when they are sore after a hard workout, hunting trip, or training session and are often very stoic, they may have "hidden" or subtle musculosketal or nervous system conditions that can affect their performance. Using a combination of palpation to identify trouble spots or trigger points and a variety of soothing massage techniques, your dog can go back to feeling and performing at their best. Scheduling regular sessions also can help maintain a working or performance dog's life for longer. Also great for senior dogs to keep them feeling great for as long as possible!
- Gait Evaluation: By using videotape and gait analysis, we can determine if a dog's stride is off to help pin point a potential injury for treatment and recovery.
- Pre-surgery Conditioning/Weight Loss: The rehabilitation process after surgery to correct an injury or abnormality is much easier for the dog and more rewarding for the owner if the dog is in good physical condition BEFORE surgery. This includes improving body condition score and muscle mass score by pre-rehabilitation exercises and nutritional management.
- Hydrotherapy: While we don't have an underwater treadmill, we can teach you and your dog to use either your own pool or natural body of water for rehabilitation or conditioning. We can also refer you to practices and facilities that use underwater treadmills.
- Pain Management: Whether from injuries or from chronic hard use, many dogs experience pain or arthritis as they age. We can keep our canine athletes working longer with less discomfort by controlling their weight and maintaining their muscle mass as well as using joint protective supplements, joint injections, medications, and a variety of other modalities. In the future, we hope to add laser therapy, medical acupuncture, and massage therapy for our patients!
For more information, check out our blog specifically addressing the health needs of the working and performance dog: http://workingdogdoc.blogspot.com/
Dr. Jones will also be glad to speak to your breed club, training group, 4H group, and so on about many topics of interest to dog owners.
Dr. Jones will also provide on site first aid to canine events. What would you do in an accident? What if a dog fight broke out or a dog was stung by a bee? Would you know what to do or who to call? Whether it is for performance sport, working, hunting, conformation or for community events where dogs are likely to be, the organizers and participants of your event will be more comfortable knowing a veterinarian is there on site for first aid. Dr. Jones is licensed in Missouri and Illinois. Here is an example of some of the recent events she has or will been the on site veterinarian for:
PSA club trial, Cedar Hill, MO October 2012
NARA French Ring East Coast Regionals, Bourbonnais, IL, October 2012
PSA Midwest Regionals, St. Anne, IL September 2012
BARC in the Park, Columbia, MO May 2011
PSA Midwest Decoy Certification Camp, High Ridge, MO February 2012
U-FLI Flyball Tournament of Champions, Gray Summit, MO November 2011
Please contact us at 573-639-9503 for more details and rates for your event.
 
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