The Katzke Dog Diary

With dogs with dysplasia or who are recovering from dysplasia surgery, one of the best therapies you can do is water therapy. Walking the dog in water for the extra resistance, letting the dog swim for the exercise and to take the weight off of their hips for a while, and generally getting the dog to use their injured legs in ways that don’t create impact injuries.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a swimming pool and can’t really afford to put one in at a rental house. And then there’s maintaining a pool to human standards, the extra insurance, and the fences and alarms that my city requires be installed around any swimming pool.

I could just use plastic kiddie pools, but I tried that before. They chewed up two of them ($25 each) last year.

Solution: a 300 gallon, $200 stock tank meant for watering livestock. I’m calling it the “redneck hot tub” …

I think we’ve had a few Jagd Terriers pass through our rescue and have just passed them off as “wire haired terriers” … it’s always nice to be able to give something a name that people can look up!