I've Devoted My Life To Freeing Dogs From Pain

Helping her ailing Labrador led Julia Robertson to develop a life-saving therapy for other dogs. Melanie Whitehouse finds out more.

Julia Robertson gently rubs the neck of a little brown dog, working her fingers carefully around to the top of his back. Milo, an 11-year-old shih-tzu and pug cross, has dodgy back knees and has been chasing his tail. To Julia, this is not an endearing habit but a warning sign that Milo is in pain.

‘Every dog with a lameness has a neck problem,’ she says. ‘This area is key for blood and nerve supply to the rest of the body. I’m checking out the muscle tone in his neck – I can identify how old an injury is from how the muscle feels. I’m also feeling for heat, which indicates inflammation, and there’s a lot of heat with Milo. This treatment will directly impact on his back end – to good effect.’ Sure enough, at the end of Milo’s session, he gets off the low couch with ease, and licks her hand. There’s no sign of tail-chasing.

Julia, 59, developed her specialised form of canine therapy after she returned home from a week away in 1996 to find her adored six-month-old golden Labrador puppy, Huffo, had problems with his neck.

‘He’d spent a week with a friend,’ she recalls. ‘The evening after we got home, he couldn’t lift his head off the ground, although he could walk and eat. The next day the vet X-rayed him and gave him tests but found nothing. They thought it was a degenerative disease and said he should be put to sleep. My children – Henry, then nine, and Meg, seven – were distraught, and I was heartbroken. We were all completely in love with him.’