Mobility Matters: A Multimodal Approach to Keeping Pets Moving

This podcast is sponsored by Virbac

In honor of Mobility Awareness Month this May, dvm360 is shining a spotlight on the movement health of veterinary patients. Joining host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, is Kara Amstutz, DVM, DACVSMR (Canine), CVA, CVPP, CCRT, to discuss how proactive mobility care profoundly impacts the quality and duration of life for aging pets.

Together, they explore the necessity of a comprehensive, multimodal approach, integrating pain management, targeted nutrition, and physical exercise, while highlighting the essential role joint supplements play in long-term support.

Below is a partial transcript, edited lightly for clarity.

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Sometimes it's more than just asking the pet parent questions, like, is your dog limping? And what are some of the more important things that a veterinary team can do during each exam to ensure they're catching mobility or issues earlier?

Kara Amstutz, DVM, DACVSMR (Canine), CVA, CVPP, CCRT: Well, I think first of all, knowing that many pet owners have trouble identifying if their pet is limping, I mean that we can't always assume that the pet owner is going to realize, so we need to ask other questions, like, is your pet having trouble doing something that he was able to do 6 months ago, such as getting up from lying down on the floor, or being able to go up the stairs or getting in and out of the car, up and down off furniture? So we need to give them very specific examples of ways that pets may start to have trouble with their mobility.

And then another really important thing, and this is something I've learned just with being within the rehabilitation and sports medicine world, is really thinking about asking the client what their dog's job is. That job may be protect the living room at all costs from the UPS guy, or it could be they have a job working on a farm, or they compete in sports, or they are a working dog that is in a setting like a police force or even a military dog. So, our patients have such a wide variety of things that they do day in and day out, and they put a lot of different types of stress on their bodies, and we need to do a better job of finding out what that is, because these clients are doing all kinds of fun and crazy things with their dogs, like agility and fly ball competitions, and if we don't ask, we're going to miss that as an opportunity to have discussions about how those dogs may be at a little bit bigger risk of having problems because of what they're putting their bodies through.

The other thing is, besides asking questions, we need to do a really good job of observing our patients, not just having them be up on the table. We walk in, do the quick exam, vaccinate the patient, talk about all the things that a general practitioner has to talk about in a short amount of time.

But if we can just slow it down just a smidge and just watch how the patient is moving around the exam room and pay attention to their posture, and if they're shifting their weight off of a limb or up to the front limbs, or even how they do going from a down to a stand. Really paying attention to how they are moving, even within your exam room, can unlock a lot of clues that I think we're missing if we're not focusing in on that.