It's Your Business: TopDog Animal Health & Rehabilitation

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When veterinarian James St. Clair, a Southington resident, opened in 2004 it was the definition of a small business — local, self-run, limited client base, single-service.

Seven years later, the company is a worldwide enterprise that thrives on the web as well as in its Meriden headquarters.

St. Clair estimates that through on-site rehabilitation, free online videos and pamphlets and the sale of manuals, rehab equipment and joint supplements, the folks at TopDog have helped over 10,000 dogs in the last year recover from surgery. On Facebook alone, the clinic has 1,334 very active – and very complimentary – followers.

It all started in Hamden, where the St. Clair first set up TopDog as a physical therapy clinic for dogs who were recovering from orthopedic and back surgeries, and needed help dealing with arthritis and other conditions.

St. Clair said he’d learned in veterinary school that post-operative pet rehab was going to be next big thing, but few places offered this type of service. Even today, there are only five such rehab facilities open in the state, according to a national guide provided by the company.

“My father thought I was crazy from the beginning starting this,” he said. 

James St. Clair’s father is Joseph St. Clair, also a veterinarian, who has been a fixture at Meriden Animal Hospital on East Main Street since purchasing it in 1978. The younger St. Clair bought the hospital from his father in 2007 and moved TopDog right next door, to its current location at 607 E. Main St. Together the two operations now have 16 employees.

It turns out his father wasn’t alone. Despite his efforts to market the center to local animal hospitals and veterinary clinics, St. Clair said that in the first year they weren’t referring clients to the center.

“I thought if I built it, they’d come,” he said, “but no one did.”

It was area pet owners who sought him out directly after their dogs had surgery. In talking to them he said he discovered that they had been given spotty and subpar advice about follow-up care. So St. Clair began penning manuals on how owners could help their dogs recover from a variety of common surgeries.

One of those is Cranial Cruciate Ligament, equivalent to the human Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL), surgery. According to St. Clair, 85 percent of dog injuries are knee-related. Moreover, about 50 percent of dogs who tear one CCL will tear another within a year.

“They used to tell you, ‘Rest for a while.  He’s fine when he starts using the leg again.’ But it’s clear now that that doesn’t work,” he said.

More work needs to be done post-operatively than mere rest. If not, dogs will compensate for an unhealed joint, St. Clair said, putting additional stress on the healthy ones, which causes the subsequent tears.

“Owners have to know that their dog won’t be at full-strength for six months,” he said.  “They have to know that the size of their dog’s legs (referring to muscle tone) have to match. This one has to be the same size as this one, or it means they’re not ready to be let loose.”

St. Clair started marketing his manuals online. Now in their fourth version, he recommends using them in tandem with bringing dogs to a professional rehab center, but acknowledges that many pet owners don’t have such a center nearby.

Dog trainer Sonia Blasbichler Kutz of Kingsport, Tennesee is one of those people.  She found St. Clair’s manuals online when looking for information about her 1-year-old Border Collie Aiyana’s hip surgery last August. She printed a copy out for herself and brought one to her local veterinarian who she said told her that the information in it was spot-on. She followed the manual’s advice and even bought a kiddie pool for water therapy for the dog.

These days Aiyana, now two, is “fantastic, totally back to normal,” Kutz said in a phone interview. She credits St. Clair or “Dr. J,” as the community on Facebook calls him, his manual, his personal answers to rehab questions she posted on the TopDog’s Facebook wall, and the joint supplements the company sells.

The joint supplements St. Clair developed with consultants, along with post-op healthcare aids like hind-leg support leashes or pet-specific hot-and-cold wraps after discovering that the online manuals filled what he said was a previously-unknown niche.

He’s moved most of his business online now— and says he has buyers everywhere from Meriden to Indonesia.

Despite the online success, St. Clair said that veterinarian recommendations to his clinic are still rare.

“For most general practitioners, who have to act as dentist, oncologist, orthopedist, everything all the time, it’s probably just that they’re very busy,” he said.  “For some though, they just don’t like change.”