In her four years of private practice, Kendra C. Hodge, veterinarian and owner of Healing Touch Pet Care in Sheboygan, says she saw a real need for services that support animals outside of the traditional Western medicine options.
She began to explore Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM) and now offers it to her patients in the comfort of their own homes.
“About a year ago, I just got really tired of essentially telling [pet] owners there wasn’t anything I could do for them,” Hodge reflects. “I feel like there are a lot of aspects of Western [veterinary] medicine, especially in the geriatric population, where we just kind of fall flat. I love Western medicine. I’m not downplaying that at all. I think [TCVM] has lots of great value.”
Hodge is acupuncture certified, leveraging the treatment to help many conditions with minimal side effects. Acupuncture can be administered in conjunction with Western medicine or alone, depending on the animal’s case. She also offers food therapy, quality-of-life assessments and in-home euthanasia services. Home-based euthanasia can bring peace and calm to both owners and their pets without the stress and excitement that comes with a visit to a clinical office.
Hodge plans to soon begin offering urgent care services for common conditions such as vomiting, rashes and ear infections.
Western medicine can be a one-solution focused treatment, but Hodge says TCVM offers many treatment approaches, meeting the animal where its needs are at any given moment.
“If the animal isn’t going to tolerate needles, can we [treat the animal] with food therapy or herbals or massage or something like that?” she suggests. “We still have the same diagnosis, but we’ve got a lot of different tools that work in a similar way.”
