Animal treatment spreading
By Colleen Dane - Comox Valley Record - May 09, 2008 | | | |

Two local veterinarians are teaching animal acupuncture across Canada and the globe, to help give more people the access to alternative treatments that Comox Valley residents already have.

“We can’t serve the whole of B.C. The veterinarians who are listening to their clients, I am offering my experience,” said Dr. Marlene Smith, with the Tree of Life Veterinary Clinic in Courtenay.

Smith, along with Dr. Heather Matheson, are teaching acupuncture as a part of a professional course for already-registered veterinarians — and, with the 140 hours of intensive course work now complete, this summer they will host visiting veterinarians for training at their local clinic.

“It is a different way of thinking — which is good,” said Smith about the integration of Chinese Traditional Healing and acupuncture into Western-medicine based treatment.

Smith first got interested in traditional medicine 40 years ago, but began to really pursue an education in it 10 years later.

“The first time I heard about Chinese medicine it didn’t make any sense to me.  I thought it was total voodoo,” she laughs now.

It took her another 10 years before she learned its principles enough to truly understand it. And in 1987, she attended a veterinary acupuncture course in the United States.

“I was amazed about the results, and in the years following that I thought, people need to learn about it,” said Smith.

She’s been involved since then in teaching veterinarians about acupuncture.

A Canadian course has evolved and now runs every other year. This year, Smith and Matheson spent a few weeks in Alberta teaching vets from across the country about alternative treatments to animal ailments.

Beginning Monday, they will host two veterinarians in their clinic, so they can learn hands-on the assessment and treatment of animals with eastern techniques.

Smith said it’s an important service, as animal owners are more and more looking to alternative treatments for their pets. She said a recent study commissioned by the American Medical Association showed that complimentary or holistic treatments have gone from “marginal to mainstream.”

“It’s really shows that a large sector of the population uses some form of complementary medicine,” said Smith.

She wants to make it more accessible for people here who can chose to use it, but also for people in countries who don’t have that same luxury.

Smith will be following up her Canadian teaching with a three-week training trip to Chile, where she’ll donate her time and pay her own expenses to teach veterinarians there how to work with natural products.

For people in many Latin American countries, after all, that’s all they have.

Pet owners are invited to participate in the training days at Tree of Life — for a small fee to cover costs for the clinic.

For more information call 338-2316.

reporter@comoxvalleyrecord.com

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_north/comoxvalleyrecord/news/18786204.html