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7 Ways Custom Dog Knee Braces Help Heal Your Dog's Knee
Dog braces come in all different shapes and sizes to accommodate almost any injury or condition that your dog may encounter throughout their lifetime. Front or hind leg braces can be manufactured to treat a number of different conditions, such as cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) tears and brachial plexus avulsions. The most common type of dog injury is a CCL/ACL tear in the knee, which can be supported by a Dog Knee Brace. This type of dog brace is often used to support the knee after an injury or while the dog is recovering from surgery on the knee.
Our Custom Dog Knee Braces are made by taking a cast of your dog's leg and forming medical grade polypropylene around the cast, attaching hinges to allow for a natural range of motion, and finally adding foam cushioning for your dog's comfort. While the final product seems simple, it will provide significant support to your dog throughout their recovery.
HERE ARE 7 WAYS DOG KNEE BRACES HELP YOUR PUP HEAL
1. Provide Support Through Specialized Hinges
Tamarack Hinges are medical grade joints that closely match your pet's natural joint motion and flexibility. These joints allow your dog to have a more natural and efficient gait. They also reduce pressure and strain on your dog's actual joints, allowing them to heal faster without compromising their movement. To read more about Tamarack Hinges, click here.
2. Restrict Specific Areas of Movement
The specialized Tamarack Hinges on our dog knee braces allow for a significant amount of normal movement, they also prevent certain motions that inhibit healing and exacerbate injuries. One motion that is prevented would be tibial drawer, or the forward movement of the tibia during walking. Tibial drawer prevents a dog's knee from forming beneficial scar tissue. Custom Dog Knee Braces support the dog's tibia by either holding it in place with a tibial strap or, for smaller dogs, support is provided by the hard shell of the brace. This type of restricted motion also stabilizes your dog's leg, allowing them to get around more easily.
3. Allow the Injured Leg to Relax
Dogs instinctively hold injured limbs away from the ground and close to the body, which means those leg muscles are constantly working and natural healing is impeded. Additionally, your dog's leg may heal incorrectly due to being held in an improper position. Our braces allow your dog to put some weight on the recovering limb by absorbing the impact of walking.
4. Prevent Damage to the Uninjured Leg
Favoring an injured leg means your dog expects the opposite limb to take most of the weight and impact from walking. This often leads to the previously-healthy leg to take on extra stress from bearing more of the weight during walking and standing. This advances the deterioration of their good leg which can lead to injury and/or arthritis. Custom braces are often bought in pairs so that the healthy leg benefits from extra support, avoiding injury and a longer recovery time.
5. Alleviate the Pain of Arthritis
Our braces provide continual support and cushioning foam padding, helping dogs with arthritis walk with reduced pain. Custom Dog Knee Braces help to shift your dog's weight off of their good leg and back onto their injured leg so they can walk evenly again. This helps to prevent excessive deterioration of the good leg due to the added stress of walking unevenly, thereby reducing the pain caused by arthritis.
6. Prevent Chronic Injuries for At-Risk Dogs
The support provided by our custom dog braces also helps prevent injuries for dogs with one or more risk factors; examples include being particularly active, overweight, or of advanced age. Dog's who are overweight have added stresses on their legs from the excess weight, which can deteriorate their joints and lead to early arthritis and other knee injures. Early arthritis can be painful, which leads to a more sedentary life where your dog won't be moving as much as they need to in order to lose weight.
7. Reduce Muscle Atrophy
When your dog's leg is injured or affected by arthritis, they won't want to use that leg as much as they normally would. This lack of use leads to muscle atrophy, or deterioration of muscle mass in the leg, which means that their leg won't be as strong as it normally would even after they have healed. The lack of muscle strength also causes your dog's knee to be less stable, this can lead to pain when they do use their leg even after their initial injury has healed. This pain after healing is known as Disuse Syndrome and is a cycle of chronic pain caused by the lack of supporting muscles around the joint. Our braces allow your dog to use their leg in a more normal way which means they will be using their muscles, gaining strength, and therefore won't develop Disuse Syndrome.
