Pet acupuncture is a serious business in China

An angry growl is reduced to a tiny whimper as acupuncturist Guo Yutong inserts needle after needle into the spine of his patient, a Pekingese helplessly strapped to a metal frame in his office.

An angry growl is reduced to a tiny whimper as acupuncturist Guo Yutong inserts needle after needle into the spine of his patient, a Pekingese helplessly strapped to a metal frame in his office.

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The scene repeats itself several times each day at the Beijing Pet Hospital, as people knock on Guo's door asking him to use millennia-old techniques to treat their pets' ailments, typically joint or skin problems.

"The theory is the same for people and for animals," said the 64-year-old doctor, stroking his gray goatee as he pointed to instructive diagrams of dogs showing the exact insertion points.

"It basically doesn't make a difference whether you treat a person or an animal," he said.

As the army of pet owners expands exponentially in China's affluent cities, more and more are attracted to the promise of traditional methods. But patience is advised.

"Acupuncture works very slowly, and you have to see the doctor repeatedly. That's a hassle for people, let alone for dogs," said a Beijing dog owner, who gave her surname as Zhang.

Even so, an entire sub-industry is emerging in China's largest cities, staffed by hundreds of practitioners, many of them attached to pet clinics that also offer western treatment.

In Beijing alone there are dozens of more or less qualified doctors specializing in acupuncture for pets, Guo estimated.

China does not have to start from square one when applying traditional methods.

The historical record for animal acupuncture goes back at least 1,000 years, although at that time the patients were not pets, but mainly farm animals or war horses.

Of crucial importance in ensuring an uninterrupted tradition, ancient Chinese medicine was one of the few areas of intellectual endeavor that survived the Cultural Revolution relatively unscathed.

Cheap, indigenous methods for healing the sick appealed to the Communists and their sense of austere nationalism.

"There wasn't much hassle from the authorities at the time," said Guo.

As interest in pet acupuncture is now growing more intense, a market is emerging not just in China, but overseas as well.

Xie Huisheng, an acupuncturist at the University of Florida's Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, treats dogs, cats and the occasional elephant and llama.

He has been in the business since 1999, and each year he has recorded customer growth of about 20 percent.

"More and more veterinarians practice acupuncture or refer their patients for acupuncture," he said.

"They experience the good clinical results of acupuncture or Chinese herbal medicine directly or indirectly, and sometimes no other options are available except for this last resort," he said.

Acupuncture and other forms of traditional Chinese medicine have so far been used predominantly for human diseases, which means there are large unexplored areas when it come to the applicability on animals.

A strong interest in further research has emerged both at home and abroad, according to Xu Jianqin, a member of the Chinese agriculture ministry's committee for approving traditional medicine for use on animals.

"There are problems with western medicine that simply refuse to go away, such as growing resistance to basic drugs," he said.

"As a result, many western doctors have started studying Chinese medicine on their own accord."

What some researchers find downright exciting is the idea that if traditional Chinese medicine helps heal animals, speculation that it works mainly via its placebo effects can be dismissed.

At the China Agricultural University's Pet Clinic, hopes are high for the range of diseases that may one day be treated with the prick of a needle.

"In the future, there may be many more diseases that can be treated with acupuncture," said Shi Zhengsheng, a doctor at the clinic. "Like respiratory diseases and fever."

Paradoxically, even as pet owners are turning increasingly to acupuncture in the cities, in the countryside, where the use of traditional methods originated millennia ago, western methods are now being adopted at an accelerating rate.

"Acupuncture in rural areas has become less frequent," said Shi. "Now it's much faster for farmers to give their animals a quick shot with western medicine."

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