Working with Your Vet and Physio to Create a Rehab Plan

Equine rehabilitation blends vet care, physiotherapy, and structured exercise. When your horse is injured or recovering, close collaboration with your vet and physio creates an effective plan. Importantly, as an owner, you are an active participant in this process. Your observations and daily interactions with your horse provide critical insights that help the professionals tailor the approach to your horse's specific needs. At Somerset Equine Water Treadmill & Rehabilitation, we use water treadmill therapy, guided by vets and physios, to rebuild horses' strength, balance, and confidence. Understanding the unique strengths each professional brings, alongside your indispensable role, is crucial as you move forward.

For many horse owners, supporting a horse through injury or recovery is a challenging experience. The path from diagnosis to full fitness can feel uncertain and generate anxiety about the next steps. A collaborative approach with your veterinarian and equine physiotherapist helps transform this period into a structured process with clear direction, supporting both you and your horse.

At Somerset Equine Water Treadmill & Rehabilitation, we witness daily how vital teamwork is for effective rehabilitation. When skilled professionals combine their expertise, they form a cohesive plan that supports every aspect of a horse's recovery. This approach ensures medical needs, biomechanics, and conditioning all align, guiding your horse back to full function. To understand this collaboration, let's outline the key roles of your vet and physio.

The Role of the Vet

Your veterinarian is the cornerstone of a successful rehabilitation program. Their primary task is to provide an accurate diagnosis, the vital starting point for building an effective plan. Without this foundational understanding of the injury, any attempt at rehabilitation becomes guesswork, potentially leading to further damage or a prolonged recovery period.

Veterinarians utilize a range of sophisticated diagnostic tools to pinpoint the exact nature and location of the issue. These include:

Once a diagnosis is confirmed, the vet transitions into the role of medical manager. They will prescribe necessary treatments, such as anti-inflammatory medications to control pain and inflammation, and establish the crucial safety guidelines for the rehabilitation process. This expert advice is vital, preventing re-injury and creating a safe framework for the physio and rehab team.

The Role of the Physio

While the veterinarian addresses the medical aspects of the injury, the equine physiotherapist focuses on restoring correct movement, mobility, and strength. A qualified physio possesses a deep understanding of equine biomechanics, which is the interplay of muscles, joints, and skeleton. Their primary goal is to identify and correct the compensatory patterns and muscle imbalances that almost always develop as a horse adapts its posture and gait to avoid pain. This often involves resetting the horse's internal navigation system or 'internal GPS' to ensure it moves efficiently and without discomfort.

A registered and insured equine physiotherapist will conduct their own detailed assessment to evaluate the horse from a functional perspective. They will identify specific areas of muscle spasm, weakness, and restricted joint movement. Based on these findings, they develop a hands-on treatment and exercise plan designed to:

• Release Muscle Spasm and Tension: Using techniques like targeted massage, myofascial release, and specific stretching protocols, the physio can alleviate the secondary muscle soreness that often accompanies an injury.
• Improve Flexibility and Joint Range of Motion: Through gentle mobilisation and stretching exercises, the physio works to restore normal movement to joints that may have become stiff due to disuse or pain.
• Activate and Strengthen Core Muscles: A strong core is the foundation of a healthy, athletic horse, providing essential support for the back and limbs. Physios use specific in-hand exercises, such as pelvic tucks and sternal lifts, to encourage the horse to engage its abdominal and pelvic muscles, thereby improving stability.
• Re-educate Movement Patterns: Injury and pain can disrupt a horse's proprioception—its innate sense of body awareness. The physio uses exercises like pole work, baited stretches (often called carrot stretches), and specific in-hand manoeuvres to help retrain the horse's neuromuscular system, teaching it to move correctly and symmetrically once again.

Your physio is your horse's movement coach, rebuilding strength, coordination, and confidence. They also provide a tailored exercise plan for use between sessions, helping you take an active role in your horses' rehab.

Collaborating Effectively

True collaboration occurs when the vet, physio, and owner communicate openly and consistently. This creates a powerful synergy, ensuring everyone is aligned, preventing conflicting advice, and guaranteeing a medically sound, practically effective rehabilitation plan. To enhance this process, establishing measurable milestones is crucial. These could include specific benchmarks, such as a pain-free walk under saddle by week six or achieving a certain level of joint flexibility by the fourth week. By having these concrete markers, the team can gauge progress and adjust the plan as needed.

As the owner, you are the central and most important point of this communication triangle. You see your horse every day and are the first to notice the subtle changes in their comfort, mood, and movement that signal progress or setbacks. Your role is to act as the vital bridge between the professionals. Here's how you can facilitate effective collaboration:

When everyone is kept in the loop, the rehabilitation plan becomes a dynamic, living document that can be adapted and refined in real time as your horse progresses through the stages of healing. To enhance this process, aim to provide your vet and physio with weekly updates, or after significant milestones are reached. This structured communication helps ensure all parties are informed and any necessary adjustments can be made promptly for optimal recovery.

Incorporating Water Treadmill Therapy

The equine water treadmill supports vets' and physios' goals. It offers controlled, low-impact exercise to bridge the gap between box rest and ridden work. Unlike land rehab, water buoyancy reduces limb loading by up to 60%, lessening strain on healing tissue. This makes it a top choice of veterinary and physiotherapy professionals.

At a dedicated centre like ours, we use the detailed reports from your vet and physio to tailor every single water treadmill session. We adjust water depth, belt speed, and session duration to match the specific requirements of your horse's injury and recovery stage, ensuring each session is safe and effective. For example, in cases of a suspensory strain, we might start the therapy with water at a depth of 40 cm and set the belt speed to 2 km/h for an initial session duration of eight minutes. This careful customisation allows us to provide a precisely targeted rehabilitation protocol, facilitating optimal recovery.

Your Partners in Recovery

Navigating your horse's recovery from an injury can be a daunting and stressful process, but you do not have to face it alone. By fostering a strong, collaborative relationship with your vet and physio, you create a powerful support system dedicated to your horse's well-being. Each professional brings a unique and vital set of skills to the table, and when their expertise is combined, the result is a comprehensive and effective rehabilitation plan.

If your horse is on the path to recovery, our team at Somerset Equine Water Treadmill and Rehabilitation is here to help you develop a tailored and integrated plan in partnership with your vet and physio. Together, we can build a solid bridge back to soundness and help your horse return to a happy, active, and athletic life.