Hospital Hours: Monday-Friday: 8am-6pm | Saturday: 8am-4pm
(519) 896-0532
Drug-free pain relief for sore joints, stiff seniors, and slow-healing wounds. Most sessions take under 15 minutes.
Laser therapy uses focused light to reduce pain, settle inflammation, and speed up healing. You'll hear it called cold laser, low-level laser, or photobiomodulation. Same treatment.
The light passes through the coat and skin into the tissue underneath. Once it reaches the cells, it increases their energy production and pulls more blood flow into the area, which is what drives repair. Nothing is cut, injected, or swallowed.
We use a Class IV therapeutic laser. Class IV units deliver more power than the older Class IIIb lasers, so the light reaches deeper structures like hips, elbows, and spines in a shorter session.
Your pet feels a mild warmth and nothing else. Plenty of them fall asleep partway through. Laser therapy is one of the tools our Kitchener veterinary team reaches for first when a dog or cat is sore and we'd rather not add another medication.
What the light actually does
Some pets come in once or twice after a procedure. Others come every few weeks for years to keep arthritis manageable.
It depends on whether we're fixing something short-term or managing something for life. We build the schedule after the first exam and adjust based on how your pet responds.
Sessions, often starting the day of surgery. Enough to take the edge off swelling and get the incision closing faster.
Spread over two to three weeks. Chronic pain responds to repetition, not one big treatment. Most owners notice a change by the third or fourth visit.
Once your pet is comfortable, we stretch the gap between visits until we find the interval that holds them steady.
Laser therapy doesn't replace pain medication. It works alongside anti-inflammatories, joint injections, supplements, and weight management, and it sometimes lets us hold a drug dose steady instead of raising it.
No. There’s no needle and no pressure on the sore spot. Pets feel a gentle warmth where the handpiece passes over.
Yes, with one precaution: therapeutic lasers can damage the retina, so your pet wears fitted goggles and so does our team. We don’t treat over a known or suspected tumour, over the uterus of a pregnant animal, or on pets taking medication that increases light sensitivity. We check the chart before every session.
Yes, and cats are often the better candidates. Arthritis is badly under-treated in cats because they hide it so well, and their pain medication options are more limited than a dog’s. Laser gives us a way to help without a daily pill.
Straining, frequent trips to the box, or blood in the urine often points to feline lower urinary tract disease (FLUTD) or chronic cystitis. Laser therapy over the bladder helps calm that inflammation and takes the edge off the discomfort. It works alongside diet changes and medication, not instead of them. A male cat who is straining and producing nothing is an emergency, so call us right away.
For a hot spot or a fresh incision, often within a day. For arthritis, expect three to four sessions. Watch for the small things: getting up without a pause, taking the stairs again, sleeping stretched out instead of curled tight.
No referral. New patients need an exam so we know what we’re treating and can rule out anything the laser shouldn’t go near. For joint and back pain we often take x-rays first. New clients can start here.
