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Hello again and welcome back to our blog.

A lot has happened in The Ralph’s 4-year journey to date including securing our hospital site at Globe Park in Marlow, developing our cultural roadmap and making progress in recruiting our incredible team. The latter includes our Head of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, the wonderful Kim Sheader!

This is Kim with Kev (Musson), one of Kim’s many adorable patients!

Kim has been a Chartered Physiotherapist (qualified to treat humans) for 18 years and a Veterinary Physiotherapist for the last six and a half years. We will tell you more about Kim in a future blog as we introduce you to The Ralph Team. But for now we wanted to fill you in on her amazing work with us to date…

Whilst our hospital plans have been coming together Kim has been leading our Mobile Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Service, The Ralph MPRS – and she has certainly been keeping busy. The Ralph MPRS is predominantly a home visit service, but also provides treatments in veterinary practices. Not only has Kim been travelling to see and treat her many patients, she has also been on the road delivering a series of talks with the support of local dog training and agility clubs, as well as a veterinary physiotherapy CPD evening.

An intro to veterinary physiotherapy

Veterinary physiotherapy is a young but growing discipline. It can be used to help all kinds of animals, both large and small, and for a variety of conditions to improve health, quality of life, mobility and recovery. Most of Kim’s patients are dogs but she also loves treating cats and, on occasion, other species. Kim is also trained in splint training and support fabrication and is able to offer bespoke neoprene and thermoplastic splints for a variety of conditions. In addition, Kim can treat large or poorly healing wounds, patients who would benefit from acupuncture but cannot cope with needles, certain skin conditions and a variety of other conditions with the use of laser therapy.

Getting the show on the road

A large part of Kim’s role is to provide guidance to pet carers as to where veterinary physiotherapy can offer the most value. To start getting the word out there, in 2017 we went out on the road with Kim to deliver a series of talks. This gave Kim a great opportunity to introduce veterinary physiotherapy to dog club members, whilst giving them the chance to ask lots of questions. It was great to see the audience engagement at every talk and to meet some amazing four-legged friends. It was very inspiring to see first-hand the passion Kim has for her patients and her work – a true Ralpher!

This is CJ and Sandra helping Kim with a demonstration during the ‘Intro to Veterinary Physiotherapy’ talk to the Berkshire Dog Training group (Mutt Mates Dog Training School)

Rave reviews

As you probably know by now, Kim is well-loved by her patients and their human families – and of course by all of us in Team Ralph! You can tell from many heartfelt testimonials how much Kim and her great work has benefited her patients and their carers. Don’t just take our word for it though, read some examples here.

If you would like to know more, Kim is always happy to discuss a case and whether physiotherapy would be helpful. To get in touch email [email protected] or phone 0800 689 4298. Please note that while Kim is happy to be approached by pet carers, she can only see patients with the consent of their primary care veterinary practice.

Take care and look forward to seeing you here again soon!

The Ralph Team