What to Expect: Your First Treatment and Beyond:

Our main goal is to use our treatments to promote the quality of life of your pet. Most often, this involves improving their energy level, mobility and/or appetite. However, these therapies often take time and repeated treatments to see their full effect. As a rule of thumb, the longer the problem has been going on, the longer it will take to see a response. Improvement is often gradual and you are likely to notice little things first, like an increase in the time your pet can tolerate walking. Frequently, within the first 4-6 weeks of starting treatments owners tell us how much better their pet is doing.

Acupuncture: Acupuncture has a cumulative effect. Although some patients will show improvement after one or two sessions of acupuncture, it often takes four to six treatments to before significant improvement is noted. Although there is some variation depending on the condition, we typically recommend one treatment a week for the first 4-6 weeks. After that, the time between treatments usually gradually increases until either the condition resolves or a maintenance interval is reached.

Chinese Herbal Medicine: After reaching a TCVM diagnosis, Dr. Barotz will likely recommend one or two chinese herbal formulas. The herbal formulas are specific to the pattern that your pet presents with. There are many herbal formulas that are used to treat any given western diagnosis and the choice of a chinese herbal medication depends on both the TCVM and the western diagnosis. As a patient undergoes treatment with acupuncture and chinese herbs, the TCVM pattern may change although the western diagnosis remains the same. When this happens the herbal prescription/recommendation will change. It is not uncommon for a patient's herbal medications to change multiple times over the course of treatment. It is therefore important for Dr. Barotz to re-evaluate your pet at regular intervals, usually at each acupuncture session.

Laser Therapy: We recommend laser therapy in addition to acupuncture and herbal medicine for most pets, especially the pets with chronic pain, arthritis, or neurologic disease. Because laser therapy has local effects on the tissues, each area of discomfort needs to be treated separately. Each area takes 3 to 8 minutes to treat with our laser and the number of areas we recommend treating depends on your pet and the specific condition. As with acupuncture, relief and/or improvement can sometimes be noticed within hours after the first treatment, but it often takes a few treatments before significant improvement is noted. As with acupuncture, we typically recommend treating the pet frequently for the first 4-6 weeks. After that, treatments are often gradually spaced out. Because of the synergy between acupuncture and laser therapy, the two treatments are usually performed during the same appointment.