Haven for Healing: Canine Health Resort

A fifteen-minute car ride whisks canines away from surgeries and other treatment at a northern Colorado veterinary hospital to a peaceful, healing environment situated on nearly seventy-five acres.

Since 2003, Connie Fredman has devoted her life to caring for other people’s pets— dogs and few retired horses— on her rural property just outside the city limits of Ft. Collins, Colorado. She’s the owner of Canine Health Resort, a pet care facility licensed by the state of Colorado. That’s where she cares for up to fifteen dogs recovering from surgeries and various other procedures performed at Colorado State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Fort Collins.

Fredman provides an invaluable service to many canine owners who can’t afford to spend the time or money to stay with their pets during treatment at the veterinary hospital. Her clients come from across the country— Maine to California— thanks to the veterinary hospital’s reputation. She never meets some of the owners because she may greet their canines at Denver International Airport (DIA), drive them to her resort, and then put them on a plane after their rehabilitation. Many of her clients, however, call the Denver metropolitan area their home.

The cheerful and energetic sixty-year-old transports canines to and from their treatment, including surgery as well as radiation therapy for cancer, at the veterinary hospital, and then tends to their needs while they recuperate at her health resort. She administers medications, changes bandages, exercises them, and drives them to and from follow up, physical therapy, and acupuncture appointments.

The dogs enjoy all the comforts of home in her farmhouse’s kitchen and living room areas that provide comfy furniture and dog beds. Floors are covered with washable rugs. Her living room leads to an outside deck where the dogs can use an ADA compliant ramp, made especially for wheelchair canines, to access a shady, securely fenced-in yard. Each day, Fredman walks her clients on her partially wooded and pastured property.  Depending on the season, some enjoy swimming in a half-acre spring fed pond.

Fredman doesn’t accept canines that are canine or cat aggressive. But if she finds that she has such a dog, her services contract allows her to return the aggressive dog to the veterinary hospital. So far, she hasn’t needed to do so.

She finds that her patients get along not only with each other but also with her own pets: four dogs, a sixteen-year old cat, and her twenty-three-year-old horse. She says once an owner leaves, the dogs settle in nicely with one another. She attributes that in part to all the attention and exercise they get. They’re awake fourteen to sixteen hours a day—playing and walking— and by bedtime are exhausted. They sleep together in the same rooms and out of crates.

Her resort sometimes has permanent clients. Fredman says that their owners fortunately have the means to give them the opportunity to have the best quality life at her

resort.

Antoine, a six-year-old Siberian husky, was born with a condition that paralyzed his rear legs. Instead of immediately treating the condition, his Kansas City area breeder surrendered him to a shelter. That’s where a good Samaritan rescued him and immediately sought treatment for the puppy. Her quest ultimately led her and Antoine to the veterinary hospital in Ft. Collins where the pup was diagnosed with an infection called neospora. He underwent treatment for the infection and one surgery to loosen up severely constricted muscles in his hind legs. The infection cleared but he still had trouble using his legs. He recuperated at Fredman’s resort and has been there ever since. She says the sad part of his story is that if his infection had been treated immediately, he would have full use of his hind legs.

Happy-go-lucky Antoine goes to physical therapy three times a week. He needs special care every day: his rear legs’ bandages are taken off each night and new ones applied every morning. But he’s thriving— playing, running, swimming, walking, and enjoying life at the resort.  His owner comes to visit and has started a fund in his honor to help other handicapped dogs that come to the resort. See: http://antoinesfund.org/ and https://www.facebook.com/antoinesfund/?tn-str=k*F

Fredman says she plans to use any money donated to her resort from the fund to help foster medically needy canines and would like to build an inside pool for clients because she knows the incredible benefits of water therapy. She anticipates that she’d use it year-round for dogs that need more supervision swimming as well as for all her patients during the months that her pond is frozen

or otherwise too cold.

The spirit of Molly, a nearly fourteen-year-old St. Bernard, lives on at the resort. More than seven years ago, Molly was diagnosed with bone cancer and underwent treatment at the veterinary hospital. Three years later, the cancer returned.

After her cancerous front leg was amputated, Molly rehabbed at the resort before she returned to her Denver home. About a year later, her owners found it too difficult to manage the hundred-twenty-pound dog because of the many steps in their multi-level home, so Molly returned to the resort to live out the last three years of her life that included frequent visits by her owners. Molly loved her weekly physical therapy visits and acupuncture treatments but especially adored her massage therapy. She recently peacefully passed over the Rainbow Bridge.

Bear, a chocolate Labrador, is another one of Fredman’s regulars. Depending on his Denver-area owner’s schedule, he lives at the resort several days a week so he can go to physical therapy to rehabilitate his back. Unfortunately, he didn’t start physical therapy immediately following back surgery, so his rehabilitation progress has been slow, Fredman says. He spends weekends at home with his owner.

Fredman’s own menagerie includes her four dogs, including Spree, a yellow Labrador mix that had one front leg amputated at thirteen weeks; and Kerry, a great Dane that needed surgery to fix her severely cow hocked legs. Fredman fell in love with them as fosters and they stayed! She also adopted Axel, a German wired-haired pointer that uses a cart to run around, from a special needs rescue; and Deacon, a chocolate Labrador, just days after her thirteen-year-old chocolate Lab passed away.

Fredman admits that she holds a soft spot for Labradors thanks to her first puppy that she adopted in 1985. The California native had grown up in a family that owned mixed breeds. After she graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in agricultural business, she interviewed for a job in Montana. But instead of accepting the job, she returned to Colorado with a yellow

Lab puppy from a litter owned by the interviewer!

She’s been a medical foster mom for Safe Harbor Lab Rescue in Golden, Colorado, for years. After fostering so many of its Labs, Safe Harbor now pays her a reduced fee if she takes in more than one of its dogs at a time, instead of just covering the costs of food and medical care for each foster. She also fosters dogs from the Rocky Mountain Great Dane Rescue. Currently, one of its dogs, Simon, is recuperating from knee surgery at the resort. He keeps her amused by his ability to put one back leg behind his head!

For owners of her private clients, Fredman charges only $45 a day regardless the size of the canine. The charge includes driving the dog to and from appointments in Ft. Collins; dog food, except if clients want their canine on a special diet; exercise; and lots of love.  She charges an additional fee to pick up or drop off dogs at DIA.

The idea for a canine heath resort came while she worked part-time at the veterinary hospital to supplement her income from her engraving business, Fredman recalls. She basically cleaned up after dogs and humans but noticed a couple of canine patients “rotting with boredom” as they underwent radiation five times a week but only during the week. The treatments lasted a month at which time their owners would bring their dogs home. She fell for Sol, a golden retriever, and walked him to help relieve his boredom. Then she asked the veterinary school if he could go home with students on the weekends. But the students were too busy. So, she made a presentation to the school’s Oncology Board and ultimately the university’s legal department approved a service agreement to allow her to offer in-home boarding services to the veterinary hospital’s clients.

The rest, as they say, is history. Fredman started boarding a few of the university’s canine patients. The dogs improved faster and were happier living in her farmhouse and taking walks instead of staying at the veterinary hospital.

For the first two years of her resort’s operation, Fredman says most of her clients were canines undergoing a month-long regimen of radiation treatments for cancer. They stayed at the veterinary hospital during the day and with her at night and on weekends. Now, most of her clients have neurology or orthopedic issues because dogs now sometimes only undergo radiation treatment for a week instead of a month. Although she doesn’t have formal training as a vet tech, she has years of on the job experience caring for dogs with different kinds of aliments and many amputees, including some of her own canines. She’s also cared for morbidly obese dogs such as Luke, a Safe Harbor Lab that she helped lose 70 pounds over seven months— from 160 to ninety pounds.

The resort can only be described as a godsend for so many canine owners. Some visit their dogs at Fredman’s resort and others receive photos of their furry friends. All are welcome to call or text her at any time, she says. “I won’t call them unless there is an issue,” she explains.

Since she opened her resort, Fredman estimates that she’s cared for nearly two hundred clients. She loves knowing that their owners appreciate her services and loves that she can give her clients a quality of life that they might not otherwise enjoy.

For more information about the resort see: http://www.caninehealthresort.com/

Related article:https://www.caryunkelbach.com/safe-harbor-lab-rescue-a-new-life-for-so-many/