2 Thumbs Down For UC Davis Small Animal Rehabilitation

If your located in Northern California and your looking for a small animal rehabilitation service for your furry feline friend, the Small Animal Rehabilitation Services at UC Davis are definitely a pass...To say that I was greatly disappointment by the Small Animal Rehabilitation Services at UC Davis, would be an understatement. To say that I was down right appalled would be more like it...Needless to say, this girl and her cat won't be going back, and she recommends that you don't bother taking your furry feline friend there either...

Within minutes of meeting the physical therapist, before she had a chance to get to know Moki, his condition or his medical file, the physical therapist was questioning me about Moki's quality of life. While she didn't quite say the words her actions indicated that she believed Moki should be put down. As I sat there in disbelief providing the physical therapist with an answer she didn't quite want to here, I watched her carefully gauge a response based on the answer I had provided, which ended in her making the statement, well "it's a question I ask all my clients."

Now maybe I am a little off here, but in my opinion as a physical therapist, one should be at least vaguely aware of the fact that, quality of life is an issue for all animals needing rehabilitation. For whatever reason, i.e., illness, a physical injury etc., something has happened to an animal which has in turn impacted its quality of life, i.e., an illness has caused paralysis, an animal was run over by a car, broke it's leg, and can no longer run, etc. Call me crazy but it seems to me that the job of a animal rehabilitation specialist is therefore to help improve the quality of life of an animal. If these animals had a perfect quality of life then they wouldn't need a physical therapist, their owners wouldn't be seeking out a physical therapist, and ultimately there would be no need for the field of small animal rehabilitation...In my mind that just goes without saying...and it seems to me that that should ring true in the mind of any good physical therapist too...Perhaps I am just asking and expecting to much...

So ok, the first red flag went off and it wasn't too shortly after that that the second one went off as well. When I explained to the physical therapist that I would like to take some photographs during Moki's appointment because Moki has many followers on his blog and Facebook page who make donations to his medical fund, and who in a very large part make getting Moki the medical attention he needs possible, she was really hesitant. Now I can understand being camera shy, but it wasn't like I was asking her to pose so I could take some photographs of her, I was only asking to photographically document his treatment. A request which no vet, or any of Moki's prior physical therapists ever had a problem with, (too bad Moki's old physical therapy office is now closed,) and with that said, her response really made me call into question why she would be so hesitate about my taking photographs, and really instilled in me a lack of faith in her abilities as a physical therapist, for the only thing I could keep thinking is, this lady is not confident in what she is doing, which explains why she feels uncomfortable with photographs being taken...

As for the actual physical therapy part of the appointment, the physical therapist more or less preformed a series of stretches on Moki, and used some mats placed under his stomach to help Moki stand in a more normal manner. She then tickled the toes on his back feet in order to get Moki to lift up one leg at a time, while placing a hand over the front of his chest, to keep Moki from pushing forward and out of a normal stance. She then said that I should repeat this exercise for 3 to 5 minutes a day with Moki.

Despite stressing Moki's thoracic inlet issues, the physical therapist then decided to try out a series of slings on Moki to see if any of these slings might help keep Moki in a normal standing position, so that we could try to improve his walking. While the sling which went over Moki's back legs wasn't so bad, it caused Moki to push forward and threw him off balance. In order to try and correct this behavior the physical therapist decided to place a second sling on Moki, which fit tightly around his chest, and applied unnecessary pressure to his thoracic inlet, which anyone with any common sense would know and recognize couldn't be good for him given the condition of his thoracic inlet, and it's curvature upwards towards his spine. I mean honestly it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that applying pressure to this area is only going to make Moki's problems worse, so you would think that certainly someone with a P.h.D. should be able to figure this out...

As you can tell from the above photograph, I believe that Moki was expecting to get a little something more out of the physical therapy appointment as well, other than the possibility of adding another injury to his already long list of medical problems...lol.

So at the beginning of the appointment I had mentioned Moki's prior physical therapy appointments at Healing Touch Small Animal Rehab, and how the hydrotherapy had help Moki to improve his coordination and that the hydrotherapy had been yielding some positive results until we had to quit as a result of what can best be described as the viral part of his condition coming back and causing his body temperature to drop. Of course the physical therapist just kind of blew off this information, so at the end of Moki's physical therapy session I thought perhaps it was best that I make it clear, that hydrotherapy was the treatment we were seeking. I showed the physical therapist some videos of Moki in the pool, and how the weightless environment allowed him to move his front legs in a way that he was unable to move them on land, or that she herself was able to get him to move them during the course of her session with him. I then asked her about doing hydrotherapy with Moki, since we had seen such positive results in the past, and to this I was told that she felt "uncomfortable with doing hydrotherapy with Moki, because he may inhale water and get it into his lungs." What the....are you honestly telling me that as a physical therapist you are afraid of drowning my cat because you are incapable of handling an animal which weighs less than six pounds in water...and keeping that animal from inhaling water into it's lungs...come on now...Oh and to top it off, the physical therapist after seeing Moki walk, thought that no ongoing physical therapy appointments were necessary...thus despite Moki's very obvious condition, she sent us on our way with a very basic home rehab plan and said see ya...

So needless to say, there is no way we are going back to the Small Animal Rehabilitation Services at UC Davis and we would highly recommend that if you have a feline needing physical therapy services, based on our experience, that you avoid them at all costs...Perhaps someday UC Davis will get the message, but until then...stay away...far, far, away!

On a final note, while UC Davis was unable to preform up to par physical therapy, Moki had an accident on the ride home, which gave me the perfect opportunity to do a little hydrotherapy with him myself, since he needed a bath anyways...The little guy kicked and moved those stiff front legs in the most positive of manners, and it was an absolute delight to see. (We still need to work on getting him to move his back legs more...) Oh and did I mention that I managed to keep water out of his lungs without a P.h.D., sorry just had to through that in...lol

So with all of that said, we have developed a new plan...after conducting an online search we discovered this really cool animal rehab center located about two hours away from our house, called Scout's House. We'll be calling them tomorrow to set up an appointment, and the best part is, this rehab center seems to REALLY value special needs animals! So we are definately very excited about checking them out!!! We think you should click on through their link and check them out as well. The place just looks so cool...