announcements

Winds of Change at Healing Arts Ministry

Greetings clients and friends of Animal Healing Arts,

As is often the case in life, the last few months have led us to an inflection point in our practice. We have been outgrowing our capacity to operate out of our home, and in August of this year, our neighbors began complaining about the extra traffic in the neighborhood. As we are not officially zoned to operate a business out of our home, we began to look for other options.

We started with small spaces, just to move our basic operation into, considered shared spaces with other practitioners, and finally looked at previous clinic spaces that we could move to and expand our services. Taking into account the vision of our ministry, finances, parking, and staffing, we just couldn’t find the right fit. This led us to take a hard look at what we are really striving to achieve and what is the best path to getting there.

Our primary objective is to provide more holistic care for pets, nationwide. There are just too few veterinarians in the country open to practicing from a more holistic perspective, thinking outside the box, and integrating ‘non-conventional’ treatment modalities into their practices. It has become very clear to me that the best way to provide more holistic care for pets is to encourage more veterinarians to practice from this perspective. By providing mentorship and sharing my business experiences, I believe that more practitioners will feel confident to take this step. We have created a solid business model working out of the home that we believe will be attractive to other practitioners looking for a way out of conventional practice protocols.

Opening up the space to achieve this aspect of our mission will require a reorganization of our current operation. Creating veterinary training programs will require me to reduce the hours I currently spend running our practice.

Therefore, after December 3, 2022, our onsite clinic will be closed.

I will continue to offer phone and zoom appointments as we currently offer.

We are committed to helping you find the resources necessary to provide a continuity of services for your pets’ needs as we move through this transition. I will be contacting other local holistic veterinarians about referrals and inquiring as to which services they are willing to provide. This will not only help provide the care you need for your pet but hopefully encourage other practitioners to integrate new treatments into their practices. We will keep you informed as this process unfolds in the coming weeks.

We thoroughly enjoy working with each of you and are honored to be part of your pet’s care.

Remember that I will still be available by phone or zoom to help, and we will still be providing you with the products you are accustomed to using. As we are closing the home clinic, we will be eliminating the home drop-box for pick up and all products will be shipped to you after Dec 3.

As always, we are open to suggestions, comments, and questions as we move forward.

We wish you and your pets all the best in health.

Dr. Judy

Product Update

Introducing – One Heart Animal Healing

Hello Everyone,

You may be wondering where our helpers have gone, now that our on-site clinic has closed. We’re excited to share that our nurse Becky has launched her own business, One Heart Animal Healing, providing: animal massage therapy, strengthening the human-animal bond, nutrition consulting, grief support, basic veterinary nursing, and more.

Becky spent over 160 hours in 2022 becoming certified in small animal massage therapy. As of this past October, she is officially a certified small animal massage therapist and has started seeing patients at their homes who have benefited from massage.

She is accepting new patients and would love to work with you and your pet to provide relaxation and healing in the comfort of your own home. Connect with her via phone/email or through her website!

Benefits of massage include:

• • Recovery: massage increases healing and muscle tone post-operatively and during injury recovery.
  • Boosts immune system function: Massage increases lymphatic flow and blood flow to improve the body’s ability to heal itself. Massage can be used preventatively or while a pet is facing an illness.
  • Range of motion: Massage enhances fluidity of movements by improving muscle tone and lengthening a dog’s stride.
  • Reduces stress & anxiety: Massage helps animals find a state of relaxation using one-on-one attention and connection to calm the parasympathetic nervous system. Active relaxation helps retrain the brain to be able to calm itself in times of stress.
  • General relaxation: Massage helps with general relaxation and comfort for achy seniors and busy puppies.
  • Strengthen human-animal bond: Massage therapy improves the human-animal connection by building trust. Pets with unknown pasts and distrust towards humans will learn gentle touch brings them love and healing.

I have observed Becky working in our clinic, and have found her to be profoundly talented at tuning into her patient’s needs and providing comfort through massage and gentle touch. I highly recommend her as a valuable adjunct to your pet’s care.

Dr. Judy

Update – A New Ordering Process

Hello Everyone,

As we move into our new Telehealth model for our practice, we see the need to reorganize some of our procedures. As always, our goal is to serve you and your pets in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

We process a large number of supply orders every day, which will now be shipped directly to you, mainly from the manufacturers. As a method of streamlining this procedure, **we are now asking that all order requests come through the order form on our website (HERE)** This will give us all of the information we need to fulfill your order without going back and forth asking additional questions.

The new order form can be found HERE and also under the SERVICES option at the top of every page of our website, as illustrated in the header image above.

Here are some tips to help expedite your order:

Please be sure to fill out the form completely and in as much detail as possible regarding your order.

This includes your contact information and correct address. We do have a separate section at the bottom of the form for an alternate shipping address.

Be as specific as possible regarding the products, and be sure to specify the quantity of each item. Since you will be paying shipping on all orders, you may want to stock up a bit to save some money on shipping.

Some products may be coming from a different supplier and/or have a slightly different name or dosing instructions. Please know that Dr. Judy has reviewed each of your cases carefully, and any substitutions will be appropriate for your pet’s condition.

The orders will be filled by non-medical personnel, so please do not ask any medical questions on the form. If you have medical concerns about your pet, then please go HERE to schedule a consultation with Dr. Judy.

***If your pet is seriously ill, we recommend going to a local clinic for evaluation and stabilization. We can then follow up via a consultation once your pet is stable***

All orders must be paid in full before shipping. We ship standard shipping only and will send products in the most cost-effective manner. Unless you’ve made prior arrangements with us to ship ALL of your orders overnight, **We do not provide any expedited or overnight shipping**

We deeply appreciate your patience as we move through this transition and navigate the ‘learning curves.’ We are here to help you and your pet to the best of our ability and strive to do so in the most efficient manner.

All the best in health to you and your pet,

Dr. Judy and the AHA Team

Vaccines – Required by Law?

I hope this finds you and your pets doing well and off to a great start in 2023. We are settling into our new routine, and while I do miss seeing clients in person, I am enjoying a bit of a slower pace. Please feel free to reach out if you need additional resources to help with your pet’s care. We are always happy to assist you.

On the subject of pet care, we continue to get inquiries from many of you regarding the inaccessibility of veterinary care without updated vaccinations. In my opinion, this is a very troubling trend as vaccines should NEVER be given to pets that are sick, injured, or otherwise stressed in any way. The package inserts on vaccines state that they should only be given to healthy pets. In fact, on our packaging for the rabies vaccines, it even states that the vaccine may cause the formation of fibrosarcoma in cats. So why on earth do we continue to inject a known carcinogen into our pets?

I know that many of you are being told by other clinics that veterinarians are under obligation of their licenses to require vaccines. This is simply NOT true. While any clinic certainly has the right to set and enforce their own policies, suggesting that vaccines are a legal requirement of their licenses is a flat-out lie. There are no such laws, at least in the state of Colorado.

Each state has its own practice code that licensed veterinarians are to follow. This is the standard under which veterinary medicine is to be practiced. Here is the verbiage from the Colorado State Board of Veterinary Medicine Policies and Guidelines regarding vaccinations:

“The Colorado State Board of Veterinary Medicine believes that appropriate vaccinations are one important aspect of preventative health care for pet animals. However, vaccinations can involve some risk to the animal. Therefore, the selection and administration of vaccinations should be specifically tailored to each animal seen and should be undertaken with care by the veterinarian. The animal’s lifestyle should also be taken into account, his geographic location within the state, and its particular health problems and corresponding risks should be evaluated. The veterinarian must also ensure that the vaccinations given comply with state and local laws.

The Board encourages practitioners to communicate with the pet’s owner regarding what selections of vaccinations have been made and why, the risks inherent in these choices and the potential outcomes of these selections. The use of an informed consent form may document these conversations and serve as a reminder to both parties of what occurred.”

You can find the Colorado Veterinary Policies & Guidelines  HERE. Page 16 includes the entire Guidelines Regarding Vaccinations.

As you see, there are no laws (at least in Colorado) obligating veterinarians to require vaccines. In fact, requiring all vaccines for all pets is in direct violation of these very guidelines.

If you are not a Colorado resident, I would highly encourage you to investigate the Veterinary Practice Code in your state. This can be done by a simple internet search as this is public information.

So how do we change this unethical and unhealthy practice of requiring vaccinations? I believe that is up to each of you who enter a clinic that is requiring vaccinations in order to receive care. You MUST start pushing back, challenging the narrative, and, if necessary, take your business elsewhere. This is a profit-driven system, so creating a financial impact on these clinics will make a difference.

I would suggest taking a highlighted copy of the guidelines (print it out directly from the Colorado state agency link above, or your own State’s website) and ask the clinic requiring vaccines why they are violating the State Board of Veterinary Medicine Policies and Guidelines. If they claim that they are liable if they don’t require vaccines, I would suggest to them that they are liable BECAUSE they are requiring the vaccines.

If we want to see changes in the veterinary health care system, we HAVE to start pushing back, challenging the narrative and confronting practitioners with the facts.

Our pets are depending on us to advocate for them – let’s not let them down!

All the Best in Health,
Dr. Judy and the AHA Team