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More Than a Laser: How Light Can Help Pets Move, Heal and Feel Better
By Dr Ryan Morgan, Onward Veterinary Services ·
We treat pain with light. Not as an experiment. Every day, on real patients.
The name is photobiomodulation therapy, or PBMT. You have probably heard it called laser therapy. Vets have used it on arthritis and injuries for years, and what has changed is where else it works: skin and wounds, the mouth, recovery after surgery. Researchers are now looking at whether it can influence inflammation elsewhere in the body too.
How light helps
A plant turns sunlight into energy. Your dog's cells are not plants, but they respond to light too.
We aim red and near-infrared light at the tissue we want to reach. Cells absorb it, and that absorption nudges processes already underway: energy production, blood flow, inflammation, tissue repair.
What you might notice, depending on what we are treating:
- less pain
- less swelling
- wounds closing faster
- an easier recovery after injury or surgery
No needle. No extra pill.
Arthritis is only the beginning
If you have met therapeutic laser before, it was probably because your pet had arthritis. There is a good reason for that.
For an older dog struggling to get up, or a cat who has stopped jumping onto the couch, the goal is not to treat arthritis. It is to get them moving comfortably and back to what they love. PBMT can be one part of that plan.
But the same treatment is now being studied well outside the joints:
- Dogs given PBMT after a routine gastropexy had lower pain scores early in recovery and were more likely to start eating sooner than dogs receiving standard post-operative care alone.
- After a professional dental cleaning, the side of the mouth treated with PBMT showed less gingivitis over the following two weeks.
- A small 2025 case series reported promising results using a form of PBM to treat acute hot spots in dogs.
So when we reach for the laser now, we are not only thinking about a sore knee. We are thinking about healing.
Does laser therapy replace medication?
Usually not, and that was never the goal.
We practise multimodal medicine. Instead of asking which single treatment to use, we ask which combination gives this particular animal the best chance of feeling and moving better. For one patient that is medication, weight management and laser. For another, rehabilitation exercises, nutrition and laser. PBMT is one more tool in the box.
Not every laser is the same
The word "laser" on its own tells you very little.
Systems differ in wavelength, power and delivery. So does the job in front of us: how deep the target sits, the size of the patient, coat and skin pigmentation. Modern veterinary Class IV systems reach deeper tissue within a treatment time your pet will actually sit still for, at multiple wavelengths and higher power than many earlier machines.
That matters when your patients range from tiny cats to giant, very fluffy dogs!
The bigger picture
What we like about PBMT is not the machine. It is what the machine represents.
Veterinary medicine does not have to choose between conventional treatment and everything else. We can take the best tools available and combine them thoughtfully. Medication. Nutrition. Rehabilitation. Exercise. Photobiomodulation. And, as we will explore next month, medical acupuncture.
Which raises a question we will come back to. What happens when you combine a therapeutic laser with what we now understand about stimulating the nervous system to change pain, movement, and how the body functions?
We are getting ahead of ourselves. Over the next few weeks we are going to shine the light on some of the more surprising ways we can use PBMT.
Next week: laser therapy isn't just for arthritis. We're going skin deep.
Sometimes the next powerful tool in medicine isn't another drug. Sometimes, it's light. So let the light shine on!