Laurel, a sweet Labrador retriever, was at the end of her life. It was last October, and the 13-year-old dog's arthritis was so disabling she could no longer stand. The pain medication from her veterinarian wasn't enough.

Owner Lynn Parsons made the sad call to a house-call veterinary practice to schedule Laurel's euthanasia. The office manager made a surprising suggestion: Try acupuncture first.

Veterinarian and acupuncturist Kelly Jenkins Nielsen talked with Parsons and was sure she could help. Within hours, she was at Parsons' home. Laurel was lying on the floor, quivering with pain. Nielsen gently, quickly, skillfully placed acupuncture needles in the prescribed points.

When the needles came out, the old dog stood up and wanted to go outside.

"It was like nothing I've ever seen," Parsons says, her eyes filling with happy tears. "She keeps getting better and better. Now she gallops around the house." Laurel receives monthly acupuncture and takes some herbs. She loves her walks and wags her tails at every stranger she sees.

While several veterinarians in the Portland area provide acupuncture to pets, Nielsen took the additional step of graduating from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine's rigorous program. She will be practicing on both people and pets at Kindred Spirits Acupuncture (www.kindredspiritsacupuncture.com), the practice she recently opened in Lake Oswego.

Along the way, she had to put her career on hold for three years, and then she had to beat a rare and aggressive cancer that had already spread through her body.

In 2001, Nielsen decided to take the same acupuncture courses other veterinarians have taken. She had seen a lot of animals in her years of veterinary practice that conventional medication couldn't help.

"I wanted to help those patients," she says. The veterinary acupuncture course provides about 200 hours of training. Nielsen took a follow-up course on herbs the next year, then one in veterinary chiropractic training. It didn't feel like enough.

"The more I learned, the more I realized what I didn't know," she says.

By OregonLive.com

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