Your Park City Options
By Annette Velarde
Lets be honest – the most loving friends we have are our pets. They spend the vast majority of their lives patiently waiting for us to come home. They offer us devoted companionship completely void of meanness or betrayal. Our souls are nearer perfect when we return their love.
Dr. Kimberly Henneman and her team at Animal Health Options approach the veterinary care of our pets with those truths in the forefront of their minds. They take a fully integrative approach in their animal medical practice that treats the whole being, not only symptoms. “Just as with humans, our pets’ healing requires a holistic view that takes mind, body, and spirit into consideration,” said Henneman.
Trained at one of the country’s foremost veterinary schools (Purdue), Henneman expanded her traditional veterinary practice to include alternative modalities early on. She now specializes in acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, thermography, herbal medicine and nutrition. “In school, we were trained to look at only one modality of healing—Western medicine,” says Henneman. “After starting my practice in the late 80s, I quickly realized this wasn’t able to treat everything. I started looking for better answers and found them with many holistic approaches.” That attitude came from her personal experience of developing chronic fatigue while in veterinary school. Western medicine could lessen the discomfort of her symptoms, but she discovered that Chinese medicine and homeopathy were capable of actually curing her illness.
“Eastern and Western medical philosophies combine the same symptoms into different diagnostic patterns. I’ve found that integrating the two together develops a more complete picture of the problem. Sometimes conventional treatment is needed, other times an integrative technique like acupuncture or chiropractic is best. Nutrition is always the foundation of both,” said Dr. Henneman. “We use all medical philosophies available to develop a diagnosis and design a treatment plan.”
Henneman has teamed with Dr. Deborah Hadlock, who specializes in animal cardiology, and Anthony Woerner, a certified animal rehabilitation specialist, to create an animal care practice that is world-renowned. Because of their system of using integrated modalities, owners of highly prized working animals have sought them out. Dog sled teams of the Alaskan Iditarod Race, the U.S. Equestrian Team, the Budweiser Clydesdales, internationally competitive sheep dogs and avalanche rescue dogs all seek their services. “Perhaps the most valuable animal I’ve ever worked on was a prize bucking bull,” smiled Henneman. “He had slipped on cement when being taken out of his trailer and needed a chiropractic adjustment to make
it possible for him to buck off the cowboys.” This year Animal Health Options will add the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Canine Team to their long list of clients.
The team at Animal Health Options constantly looks for ways to improve the health care available to our four-legged friends. It’s the least we can do for the beings that give us so much more than they take.
435-647-0807, animalhealthoptionsvet.com
