Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr Judy Morgan, and my guest today is Dr Laurie McCauley. She has dedicated decades to revolutionizing veterinary rehabilitation. She founded the first veterinary rehabilitation center, created the first underwater treadmill for dogs, how cool, and has educated 1000s of veterinary professional. Internationally recognized for her contributions, She is one of fewer than 120 veterinarians worldwide, board certified in Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. Dr Laurie has received prestigious honors, including the Iams Award of Excellence in rehabilitation and the AHVMA Holistic Practitioner of the Year for her groundbreaking work and compassionate care. Dr Laurie welcome. Thank you so much for being my guest today.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 0:54
Thank you. It's an honor to be here. I'm excited.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:58
So this is really cool. I had no idea that you invented the underwater treadmill. Like, that's been like, such a huge breakthrough for rehab, for our dogs and cats, frankly. I mean, they've been around well, for the horses, like, I remember way back in vet school in the 80s, like we had, but it was, it was more like these long trenches, and you put the horses in and you walk them along the trenches. So very, very cool stuff. So you are a firm believer, as am I, that our dogs need exercise and stimulation, and so I've got four dogs at home right now, I have one total couch potato. This one, I have to physically put her outside twice a day to get her to just pee, and the rest of time she spends on the pillows on my bed. Then I have one who loves to go out and play fetch. And then I have two that are constant motion, like they just never stop. And I have a feeling the two that never stop are probably going to be the ones that live the longest. Am I correct?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 2:02
Yeah, most likely, absolutely. There's a ton of research in dogs and humans that show that exercise is like the number one thing you can do to increase longevity.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:13
That's why my doctor keeps harping on me,
Dr. Laurie McCauley 2:17
yeah, get up 15 minutes of exercise every morning gives you more energy, improves your metabolism, your brainpower, all of that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:26
Well, does cleaning stalls and lugging water and food buckets and hay count? Because that's what I do every morning, first thing
Dr. Laurie McCauley
Absolutely
Dr. Judy Morgan
and you know, it's my favorite time of the day, getting out there first thing in the morning and being around all the animals. And you know, there's nothing more satisfying than hearing that crunchy Munch of all the horses in the barn in the morning. It's very cool.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 2:48
I don't have horses, but we have 10 chickens, two pigs, two dogs and two cats. So
Dr. Judy Morgan
there you go.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:56
Yeah, so I don't have any pigs yet. Might work on that anyway. So what age should people start with their dogs exercising? I mean, we just kind of assume that that puppies, you know, they're playful anyway, although I've had some couch potato puppies as well. How critical is it? And does it have to be a set routine, like, what should we be doing with our with our dogs? And why does it matter?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 3:20
Well, the big thing is what not to do. So the one thing we know from the research is you don't want to let puppies go upstairs by themselves for at least 12 weeks because of the having to reach up with their back leg and push off puts a lot of pressure on that hip, and then much more likely to have hip issues. But but other than that, play is wonderful. I wouldn't do any forced exercise until and when I say forced like, we're we're going to go for a walk until they're at least six months of age. But even as babies, you get them at like eight weeks, 12 weeks old, we can be working on sit to stands, just, you know, not like we're gonna do 20 of these, but we're going to practice how to sit right, how to stand right, so they have proper biomechanics. We don't want those sloppy sits, because that changes a lot. And if we think about the joints when they're babies and growing, it's like clay, and we have the ability to mold them by having strong muscles that support things, as compared to having to be all haphazard and maybe not having their hips form appropriately
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:27
Exactly. So I know that you know, We hear this all the time. Oh, my dog's just getting old. And really interesting thing, it's in my first book that I wrote the From Needles to Natural, a story about my Doberman when he was nine. It was when rimydl first came out, and he was a big, older dog, and he slept a lot. He was kind of lazy, and we owned three acres, but, you know, he was just kind of meh. He would wander the. Um, and so when rimydl first came out, this was before I knew anything about the dangers of all these things. I started him on rimydl, and all of a sudden, this dog was leaping over the furniture and racing around the yard and chasing the deer. And I it was, you know, a light bulb moment. Oh my gosh. This dog was sleeping all the time because he was in pain, and I didn't, I didn't realize it. So, you know, the rimydl was good only for for that aha moment. You know, it was bad for a lot of other things. And now I have so many other ways I would treat them instead. But what happens when our dogs are aging and we allow them to be that couch potato like we don't, you know, we think, Oh, they're just getting old. They're not supposed to move around much. I mean, I really think that as seniors, they still should be out doing something.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 5:49
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we think about humans, right, and Silver Sneakers and all the reasons why we should be exercising. And it's the same for the dogs. What we see as they get older, if we don't do anything is they lay around. And it may be that they're uncomfortable, right, like you talked about your dog, or they may not be able to go outside. They live in an apartment, or they don't have a fenced in yard, and they atrophy. Their muscles get smaller and weaker, and then muscles can change strength and size, but so can tendons and ligaments, and that's what holds our joints together. So if they lay around, muscles, tendons, ligaments, all weaken, and then their joints become unstable. And as their joints are unstable, then when they are moving around, they have more instability. They get more inflammation, more grind, which creates pain, which means they lay around and they cycle down and down and down. My goal in life is always to get them control the pain so they feel great, then get them moving and do both endurance exercises, which are your type one exercise or type one muscle fibers, as well as your strengthening exercises, so you're getting both types of muscle fibers strong. And then muscles take three weeks to change physiologically, whether you're not moving at all or you're exercising, tendons and ligaments take three months. So it takes a while, but we can strengthen the tendons and ligaments as well as the muscles to help stabilize it. And then we see those dogs. They feel better, they're more active, like you were saying, jumping over things, right? Jumping over things, they feel better. They're more active. They get stronger. They get stronger. They're more stable. They're more stable. They feel better. And we cycle them back up, and that's when we see these dogs that are 14, 15, 16,17, 18, 19, 20 years old, that still have a really high quality of life. And that is my dream.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:43
Yeah. Well, I keep saying that, you know, the longevity for our animals needs to go back up. I mean, right now I see people on social media all the time, oh, he had a good, long life. He lived to 12, and I'm like,
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:58
he's still a baby.
Dr. Laurie McCauley
My dachshund was 18 and a half, and he I only lost him because he had an embolism. My golden retriever was 15 and a half, and I lost him from osteosarcoma when he was 12, but with holistic medicine, not chemotherapy, not that. That's the right answer for everybody. We had him for 43 more months.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:19
That's amazing. Yeah, truly amazing. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of my guys into the 17, 18, 19 and they're smaller breeds, but 17, 18, 19 and I just, I wish everybody could, could get that and could have that as a realistic expectation. I mean, I know things happen, and you know, we still have all kinds of cancer issues, but I mean, my last little one with that I lost a little over 17 years old, had bladder cancer, and he had it since he was, you know, probably late 14, early 15 year and again, holistic treatments only, and he didn't die from the cancer. He, you know, other things went wrong so, and I think that's what we need to look at. And I will say that my 17 year old with cancer was still bouncing around the house like he would go out and race around the yard. And I think that that that does help. So talk about how this affects the brain and nerve function.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 9:23
So there's tons of studies, and I'm a research nerd, so I, you know, one of my gifts is to be able to take really cool, complicated stuff and simplify it for people. So the research done in both humans and mice show that the type one muscle exercises, walking, running, swimming, increases the number of brain cells. So in our hippocampus, which is a part of brain from memory and learning, and then the strengthening exercises in the mental stimulation increases our which increases our type two muscle fibers, the other kind of fibers, actually increases the longevity, or the lifespan, of those brain cells. So we have more cells and they live longer. So instead of dogs brains, as they get older, shrinking, we can actually stay to the mice have them increase five times the size. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:15
I would assume the same holds true for people that yeah, if we're strengthening those muscle fibers, then. So, you know, all these older people, older animals, where we say, Oh, they have, you know, cognitive dysfunction syndrome. It's like, Well, okay, if we get them moving and strengthen things, we're actually going to help build brain, brain cells and brain function as well.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 10:36
In humans, they say, doing things like learning an instrument, learning another language, help with the brain cells. And then there's three types of exercises. There's the endurance exercise, walking, running, swimming. There's a strengthening exercises in humans, it's weights. In dogs, there's specific exercises we can do. And then there's proprioception or balance exercises. And by doing all three, you significantly increase not only lifespan but health span, right? Because we don't want just our dogs to live forever. We're going to be happy, healthy, running, playing, joyful, while they live forever.
Dr. Judy Morgan 11:09
Yeah, absolutely. My, my longest living guy was 19, and he when I got him at age eight, he had the worst X rays I've ever seen. The arthritis was he was a breeding dog who'd been used way in puppy mill, used way too much for breeding. So we know from Chinese medicine standpoint, when you overuse them for breeding, that's part of the kidney in the water element, and you're going to have bone problems. Dental he didn't have any teeth left at age eight, and his bones were horrible. So he spent his last few years in a four wheeled cart. But let me tell you, when he saw something that he wanted, those little feet paddled as fast as they could. That cart was gone. And I think that it, you know, giving him back that mobility made a huge difference for him. And I, you know, looking back on it, I probably not that I would have had time in my schedule at the time, but if he had gone for specific PT, we probably could have strengthened him a lot more. So do you own a I'm assuming you do own a rehab center?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 12:12
Yeah, well, I had a huge rehab center. I had the first one, right? So that was up in Chicago. We had 4000 square feet. It was I had 24 employees. It was huge. And then I moved down to North Carolina, and now I do a lot of teaching. So Optimum Pet Vitality is my teaching platform for pet parents and professionals. And then I see clients on a house call basis.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh, how nice.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:37
how nice. That is amazing. I know you've got, you've got courses we want to talk about, and you've got a story of one of your own dogs that kind of sent you on this path. So we're going to talk about that when we come back. Right now, we're going to take a break to hear from our sponsors.
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr Judy Morgan and my guest today, Dr Laurie McCauley, is one of the first pioneers in rehabilitation for our pets, and we're having this amazing conversation about all the things that she has done and she's made she mentioned kind of one of her courses, but, and we're going to talk more about those, but you have a story about your dog Sid?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 15:37
yes. So. Sid, come here. He's looking at squirrels right now. Come here. Come here.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:45
Well, squirrels are much more important than computers
Dr. Laurie McCauley 15:49
he's usually sitting on the couch behind me anytime I'm doing a podcast or anything. Sid came to me when he was 11 months old, and I absolutely fell in love with him. He came from the Humane Society, and he came home, and I said, you have straight knees, so you're a cruciate risk, you have straight shoulders, so you're a shoulder injury risk. you have a long back and you run like the wind, so you're a back injury and iliopsoas injury risk, I'm a rehab vet. What am I going to do to not have this happen? And I put together an exercise program for him. And then, being that I share with a lot of my friends, I sent them the exercise program, and they're like, oh my god, Laurie, this is amazing. You have to, you have to share this. And I shared it with one of my friends, Laura, up in Chicago, and her Sheltie, doing this program went from she was 10 when she started it at 11, she was the seventh fastest Sheltie in Bad dog agility. So in the top 10. Everyone else that was in the top 10 for speed was like four or five and six years old. And here she's 11. Wow. In that position, she's and Laura's comment was, I thought my dog was strong. I had no idea what her potential was. So thanks to Sid, I've been able to put together this core and more, this exercise program for pet parents. We have a equal course for the professionals that strengthen everything to give them quality of life. Strengthening type one, type two, muscle fibers, endurance, strength, everything, proprioception, balance, everything.
Dr. Judy Morgan 17:24
How cool. So, how, how? How much time do you does that? Would the average pet parent have to spend on that with their dog each day in order to build that, that core strength?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 17:38
It depends upon what they want. It could be five minutes twice a day as they're getting ready to feed. It Can be doing it while we're on a walk. And just add, you know, one house we're going to go sideways. One house, we're going to go backwards every time we get to the end of the street. We're going to do a sit to stand, or five or 10, whatever. Or it can be like, I have an athlete, I'm going to spend 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night. So for Sid, I feed him doing exercises, and he, for the last couple years, has been able to walk not only on a peanut ball, but he can walk on a round ball, forward, backwards, sideways, spin, twirl, all of that stuff without any help at all. He controls the ball and everything.
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:18
Holy cow,
Dr. Laurie McCauley 18:21
yeah. And the more I teach him, the more he does. I have not found anything I couldn't teach him to do. He's that strong. But it's what we do, right?
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:30
Yeah, for sure. Well, this is what happens when you get adopted by a physical therapist.
Dr. Judy Morgan 18:38
And how old is Sid now?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 18:40
He will turn eight in June.
Dr. judy Morgan 18:43
Wow. And so you've been doing that program for eight years. He just, you just continue on with it all the time.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 18:48
Well, I got him when he was 11 months, so I probably started when he was, like, a year and a half, because I was starting to put together, okay, what exercises, you know? What am I working so it was very well thought out to be well rounded and balanced, but, yeah,
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:05
Very cool. And, and I, I'm assuming there's enough reward in this for him that he thinks this is fun.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 19:11
Oh, my God. He loves it. He loves love, loves to work. He will come and literally take his Kong or another toy and throw it at me, like, Come on, Mom, it's time to go. Let's work. Let's work. And the other thing I should say is, because I don't want people to think that, you know, you have to be super, super strong or super super smart to be able to do the exercises. Is, is designed to be safe enough for a 16 week old puppy, a 16 year old dog. And there's all kinds of challenges in there. So there's all different levels. So you can take it from, like I said, a puppy, all the way to an athlete.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:47
And so let's say somebody has an older dog that they haven't done anything with. Could they still take this program and just kind of start like, like anything start slowly and work their way up?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 20:01
Absolutely, in fact, because I have had so many clients who are the type A we're going to start with the hardest thing. We designed it so they only get four exercises every two weeks, so it's in a progression specifically for that. And then it tells them, okay, now you're done with this exercise, you can progress to that exercise. Or, you know, hey, if this is easy, here's a challenge. Or if this is hard, we even give red flags. If you see blank, stop what you're doing and go to your vet because there's something wrong with your dog.
Dr. Judy Morgan 20:30
Yeah, yeah. I, you know, at one point, I think it was right after I learned chiropractic and acupuncture, I had this dream that I would have a rehab center, because I thought that it was, you know, it was very early rehab. And I just thought, you know, all these animals that get cruciate surgeries and don't get any rehab like we wouldn't. We don't do that to people like with my mom broke her hip and her shoulder, and the day after surgery is like, you're standing up, yep, you're you're getting moving, yeah, and, you know, and months and months and months and months of rehab, and right? And we don't we in the past, we didn't do that with our animals. I think it's more common now, but I think there's still an awful lot of dogs that are getting cruciate surgeries that never get any rehab.
Dr. Laurie McCauley 21:20
It's true. It's true. And I actually have a quote in one of my lectures that talks about, you know, from what we have seen, physical therapy will be not doing. Physical Therapy will be considered malpractice in the near future, and that was in human medicine in 1959
Dr. Judy Morgan 21:40
oh my gosh,
Dr. Laurie McCauley 21:42
yeah, yeah. So that's when the original research was done and physical therapy was started, and they saw such it was a huge study, multi center study, and they found such tremendous benefit to it that they had to stop the study so that everybody in the study would get the physical therapy.
Dr. judy Morgan 21:58
Wow. Why did it take us so long to start this in dogs?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 22:02
My story is, I fell down the stairs at four o'clock in the morning putting my dogs out, and went to the chiropractor because I hurt my back, and he couldn't fix me, and he sent me to a surgeon who sent me to a PT, and I went, oh my god, this is what I want to do for dogs. And that was 1998 and I've been doing it ever since.
Dr. Judy Morgan 22:20
Wow, you know, everybody has their every holistic practitioner I talk to has their aha moment where they this is what I want to do. Okay, so let's, we'll, we'll do a few client centered questions. So how do we know if our dogs are getting enough exercise?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 22:41
they should be changing their breathing pattern. So if we're going for a walk, they shouldn't just be meander, sniff, meander, sniff. They I mean, and you could do that, but that's not your exercise. Your exercise is we're going to go, and you should see them having some fatigue, so they don't have to be like, Oh my god. This is horrible, but they should be changing their breathing pattern. They should be, you know, panting. You want them to be tired, right? You want them to sleep well. And, you know, you can think about starting just like humans. You might start with, like, five minutes once or twice a day, and then build up. Because, just like humans, if you do, if I say, go run a mile, and you've never run a mile, it's hard. But if, right, three times a week you run a mile six months later, that's nothing, right? So we want to figure out our goals. Do I just want them to be healthy and happy and we do five minutes twice a day, or am I looking for more? And then we continue to increase the challenge so that they continue to to grow. The other thing is, if they're painful from arthritis, you're not doing enough, because even in the human medicine, they say that exercise, therapeutic exercise, is the number one unrecognized form of pain control for osteoarthritis, and that's from human research.
Dr. Judy Morgan 24:03
Yeah I mean, I know that from the horse world, the last thing you want to do is take an old arthritic horse and lock them in a stall. They need to be moving, moving, moving, moving, which is, you know, it's, unfortunately, it's kind of the opposite of how people want to think. People want to, oh, you know, he's painful. We're, you know, we'll give him small space. Yeah, yeah. So let's so over 50% of the dogs in America are overweight. How do we what do we do with our obese dogs to get them moving?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 24:37
You start slow, right? You never want to take them till they're painful just like us, we don't want to take it till it's pain. It's painful, but we want to be consistent, you know. And it may be three times a week we go for a longer walk, and the other days a week we go for a shorter walk, and then we start adding exercises for strength in there. And then, you know, we slowly build that up. And obviously it's a. Dropping calories as well. But again, I'm a Research nerd, so there's research that shows that both humans and animals, if you just drop calories, you lose as much muscle as you do fat. If you drop the calories and exercise, you maintain your muscle and drop just fat. And if you just meander, right? You can walk a mile, but if you're meandering, it's not going to change your fat at all. You have to be changing your breathing pattern for at least 25 minutes to be able to start to burn significant amount of fat. So build up to longer exercises.
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:35
Yeah, I had a client, a blind man, who had a seeing eye dog, and when he got the dog, it was 65 pounds. And a couple of years later, the dog was 135 pounds. Couldn't fit in its harness anymore, so he brought the dog in, and he wanted to try one of the weight loss, appetite suppressant drugs that was on the market at the time. And he was told by the seeing eye place that he had to feed the dog kibble. And I said, we can't keep feeding this dog kibble. This is not working. And the stuff that we gave, the drug that we gave him that was recommended, just caused diarrhea, but it, you know, nothing else. So we played around with this for about a month, and the dog just wasn't losing weight. And I said, you know, if this dog lived with me, this dog lived with me, this dog would lose weight. And he said, Well, would you take him, Doc? And I went are you nuts. Yeah, I took 135 pound Labrador home with me and had him for the whole summer. And we used to, we had a place at the shore that we would go to on the weekends, and we would take him and all of our dogs, and then we would be walking. And at the beginning, this dog literally couldn't walk to the end of my driveway, and it was not a long driveway. He could. He could barely move. And by the end of the summer, we had this dog along with our pack. People used to stop us and say, Are you dog walkers? We're like, sadly, no. But we got him to the point where, you know, he was walking a few hours a day nice. We were just very determined. So I got him down to 90 pounds nice. And then he went back to the owner, and I told him, I will supply the food and the treats. This is how much you get for the week, right? Can have no more. And when you bring him in at the end of the week and we weigh him, if he's gained weight, you don't get next week's food, you're gonna have to buy it if, if he lost more weight, I'm giving you the food again. And so we continued on this, and he was doing great. And then they moved and I have no idea what happened, but we did get him back into his harness, so, but that, you know, it even the most, I mean, that dog was twice what he should have weighed, yeah, we still managed to get him on an exercise program. He was funny. If we would stop and talk to people, he would hit the deck. He was just like, I'm exhausted. But it did work. Oh man, we are out of time. You have the most interesting programs this core and more. Sounds like a really interesting course. You also have a giveaway for the listeners. It's an ebook, the Top Five Exercises for Geriatric Dogs. We'll put in the show notes. How people get that? It's a text. You're going to text healthy to 1-866-949-0068, and you'll get an exercise booklet. And then you might want to look at the core and more program and any dog could start on this at any time. Do you do anything for cats?
Dr. Laurie McCauley 28:28
You know what? I have two cats. I use my tuning fork with my cats, but they're seven years old, you know, and I expect them to live into their 20s. So I don't have exercises for them, but I love on them all the time.
Dr. Judy Morgan 28:42
I think we should probably work up an exercise program for cats, because I have the late my inside cats are the laziest cats in the world. My outside cats are athletic and wonderful, but most people have indoor cats and they don't get any exercise. So all right, there's your assignment. We need a cat. Sounds good? All right, Dr Laurie Thank you very much. You can find Dr Laurie on all the social media at Optimum Pet Vitality. Thank you very much for listening.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
