Understanding the Integrative (Holistic) Approach to Pet Care

Understanding the Integrative (Holistic) Approach to Pet Care

I have 5 goals for using a natural, holistic, functional medicine approach to treating my patients. They are…

  1. Prevent Disease
  2. Say NO to Drugs
  3. ”Heal” the Pet, Rather than “Treat” the Disease
  4. Offer “Hope for the Hopeless”
  5. Save Money on Pet Care

Disease prevention means using various lab tests to try to diagnose potential problems early, treating them using natural therapies such as herbal medicines. It also means ensuring that the pet is eating a healthy natural diet and using supplements to maintain health and restore proper function to the pet’s body. Vaccines can be used sparingly to prevent infectious diseases but should only be used based upon inexpensive blood titer testing, allowing the pet’s body to tell us what vaccines it needs.

Saying NO to drugs means using natural therapies first to treat sick pets, only using potentially harmful or toxic medications when absolutely necessary. In most cases in my practice pets never need to be treated with conventional medications.

Healing the pet is restoring proper function to the pet. We focus on the pet and not just the disease. So as an example, I don’t treat cancer…I treat PETS who have cancer. And such each pet is an individual, our treatment to restore health means we make the treatment fit the individual pet’s needs. There is no cookie-cutter approach to functional medicine.

Offering hope for the hopeless is to give every pet a chance to heal, offering unique therapies for pets who have not been helped by traditional medicine. Euthanasia is only offered as a last resort.

This approach has resulted in our ability to save and even cure pets not helped by traditional medicine.

Finally, we are always looking for ways to decrease the cost of care, and keeping pets healthy means fewer veterinary visits for illness.

Following these steps, you can ensure a long and healthy life for your pets!