ST. BERNARD'S WORT

By Christine Gorman

When Casey collapsed on Christmas Eve two years ago, Betty Lieu rushed him to the hospital, where doctors found his spleen was cancerous and removed it. The prognosis was grim. Even with chemotherapy, Casey would have only a few months to live. Desperate, Lieu, a retired legal secretary in Los Angeles, decided instead to take a chance on a holistic healer who offered to boost Casey's immune system with herbs. Much to Lieu's delight, Casey gained back the weight and energy he had lost, and his coat is once again shiny and full.

His coat? Indeed, and why not? If being treated for a medical ailment by out-of-the-mainstream means is good enough for a human being, why shouldn't it be good enough for a golden retriever--or for any of our animal companions? Alternative medicine for pets may not be as widespread or well publicized as the human variety, but it's growing faster than a sprig of St. John's wort. The options for pet owners range from the surprising to the sublime, depending on how far you're willing to stretch your faith--which is, after all, a large part of what alternative medicine is all about.

Is Rover's conjunctivitis acting up? Try a little acupuncture. Fluffy spitting up hair balls again? There's an herbal tonic just for her. Horses can lap up the "vibrational wisdom" of dandelion and other floral essences. There are even homeopathic remedies tailored to the strange and, it must be assumed, esoteric needs of iguanas.

Two weeks ago in Old Westbury, N.Y., dozens of dogs, a few cats, a pair of African gray parrots and hundreds of faith-stretching humans showed up for what was billed as Long Island's first annual Natural Care Animal Expo. There they pored over everything from organic dog biscuits to hands-on healing for felines. "People are hungry for natural alternatives," says Susan Marino, 46, a holistic-health practitioner for pets who was the organizer of the conference.

Although the American Medical Association might take a dim view of some of those alternatives--at least when they're prescribed for people--many veterinarians don't seem to think their clients are barking up the wrong tree. Some veterinary schools have started offering electives on alternative techniques. Last year no less mainstream an organization than the American Veterinary Medical Association opened its heart to holistic karma by publishing an official set of guidelines on what it likes to call complementary care.

Like cancer patients who fly to Mexico for the latest miracle cure, many pet owners take the alternative route because they have nowhere else to turn. "By the time they come to me, the choices are pretty much either try alternative medicine or put the animal to sleep," says Susan Wynn, a veterinarian in Atlanta. Wynn, like all other licensed vets, was thoroughly grounded in Western medicine before she turned to unconventional treatments. Some owners seek alternative pet care because they use it for themselves. Other humans have even started taking their pets' medicine. Glucosamine and chondroiton sulfate, two compounds that have been used for years to relieve stiff joints in dogs, are currently enjoying a vogue among bipedal sufferers of arthritis.

It helps, if you're a holistic vet, to be sensitive to your clients' needs and to deliver whatever level of New Age exoticism they're comfortable with. Although veterinarian John Limehouse of Toluca Lake, Calif., is partial to traditional Chinese and homeopathic treatments, he tends to diagnose and describe his patients' symptoms in familiar Western terms. Sometimes it's easier to tell an owner that a dog has irritable bowel syndrome, he says, than to invoke the Chinese concept of "life force" and explain that an animal has a "deficiency of chi."

Except for acupuncture, which has been studied for pain relief in lab animals, and some herbal remedies, most alternative treatments for pets are not well tested. "There is not a controlled study for everything," admits David Jaggar, former executive director of the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society in Longmont, Colo. "We use the science whenever we can, but as practitioners we have to resort to artful applications."

Although most artful applications are relatively harmless, there are risks. Some antimedicine pet owners talk about refusing to have their pets vaccinated--which in many states would be a violation of the law. The danger is that by relying on homeopathic remedies instead of vaccines to protect against, say, rabies or feline leukemia, these true believers could contribute to a larger outbreak that all the healing auras in the alternative universe could not combat.

That risk, so far, is still largely theoretical. In their defense, holistic vets point to miraculous recoveries like Casey's that cannot, for once, be attributed to the placebo effect, in which the expectation that you will get better actually makes you better. The beasts of the field, it may be safely assumed, don't come to the animal clinic expecting anything; the results they get speak for themselves.

In the end, as with all things bright and Aquarian, it helps to have an open mind. There may be no scientific basis for homeopathy, but when you look into the eyes of Sailor, a buff-colored nine-year-old Persian mix, you want to believe. Three years ago, Sailor suffered from asthma and diabetes. Heavy-duty drugs had sapped her strength, and conventional vets recommended euthanasia. When her owner, Carley Alderman, brought her to Wynn's office, Sailor could hardly move. Wynn confirmed the diagnosis, then changed Sailor's treatment to a series of homeopathic pellets. The cat rallied. "She runs up and down the stairs," Alderman marvels. "I'm convinced we wouldn't have Sailor with us now if we hadn't taken her to Dr. Wynn."

Perhaps. But even the animal fringe has a fringe. Take--with as many grains of salt as you wish--the animal communicators. Like modern-day Dr. Dolittles, these visionaries have long talks with animal companions, often over the telephone, to plumb the depths of their presumably troubled psyches. A 30-min. consultation might reveal that an aging horse is worried about being sent to the glue factory or that a dog feels overburdened by having to bear all his master's secrets in silence. Typical cost: $35 a session. And they say psychotherapy is a dying art.

--Reported by Deborah Edler Brown/Los Angeles and Elisabeth Kauffman/Nashville

With reporting by DEBORAH EDLER BROWN/LOS ANGELES AND ELISABETH KAUFFMAN/NASHVILLE