I am thrilled to share this story about Nora and her huge pain reduction!

Meet nora! She is a sharpei who has severe arthritis. She has had this managed well by the vets for a time, but her mum felt she needed more help. The delay for statting ohysionwas due to her not being the best behaved and not really appreciating being handled. But age had mellowed her, so she decided to give me a go. Im thrilled she did as she has never had any issues with the physio process, but we don’t push her too hard.

This amazing super star has improved a whopping 18 points on her load score since starting physio 3 months ago! This is so exciting!

The LOAD has a longer name, the Liverpool osteoarthritis in dogs. It’s a questionnaire produced by Liverpool University and is validated. This means we know for a fact that the score is a good measure of how much pain the dog is feeling.

I use this and many other tools to assess my patients as it is a reflection of owners perception. But it’s super exciting as I use this at the first session and then again 12 wks later. You then get a comparison and if the same owner does the questionnaire, the answer is is very reliable!

Nora original score was 37 and in the highest pain category. The mum was so sorted as she did feel it was close to the end, but not there yet and she wanted to give Nora every chance.

I set Nora up with a home exercise regime and we did massage and PEMF therapy.

12 wks later we have this amazing new score of 19! It’s now dropped 2 categories to moderate. Mum has noticed she has been more her old self. Everyone is happier!

We do, of course, acknowledge that there has been improvement in weather, and that will help, but not every patient makes this huge improvement, so this one needed shouting about! We equally don’t often get patients with such high scores, but it’s really great to be able to support Nora at this time and her parents and make her grey years a more comfortable time!

We also completely praise the efforts of the parents and Nora for doing the home plan so well! Well done!