My History

I feel that the history of my patients holds more answers than any diagnostic test. I like to take a detailed history and dig deep into all the aspects of my patients' lives. I feel I owe my followers a bit of a history of myself in return. My unique background gave me my core values of love, truth, and peace, and gave me my unique approach to veterinary medicine. My background made it hard for me to fit into traditional veterinary practice and enabled me to create a more unique approach.

I grew up in Canada, in the small Nova Scotian town of Antigonish. My first love was a cat we named Nightmare after she appeared on my bed one summer night. The following summer, she disappeared, only to reappear in the window of our neighbour’s home, where she continued to live out her years. My cocker spaniel Maccou was more inclined to return home, although she betrayed my loyalty every time she gushed over a stranger on the street. When my mother and I shared a horse, a middle-aged standardbred named Jazz, his affection was shown by a reserved chin rest on my shoulder. My love for these animals mended and broke my heart.

I chose to study English Literature rather than veterinary medicine at first. I liked reading and writing, and disliked my science teachers. Saying something new and saying something true was the challenge I encountered in my studies. Several years later, missing animals, I returned to school and studied sciences in preparation for vet school. I loved taking tests with clear right and wrong answers and using evidence to prove scientific facts. Even in a gap year, where I studied Equine Stable Management, I learned how traditional truths about horse care are founded in scientific fact. 

Between my English degree and vet school, I backpacked in Europe and Asia and worked as a groom, a travel guide, and an English teacher. On my travels, I noticed that when people were suffering, their animals usually were too. It seemed impossible to help animals in societies where human welfare was so poor. When I graduated from vet school, I still struggled to make a lasting improvement in the welfare of my animal patients. I opened my animal hospital and found I was still doing more treating than preventing suffering in animals.

I loved animals and wanted to help them. I used peaceful Fear Free TM methods to handle them to protect their emotional health. And I learned the hard truth that many of their problems were caused by how we bred, fed, and cared for them. Our companion animals need us to know that when they are itchy, nauseous, anxious, or in pain, the cause is often an altered microbiome, poor diet, and a stressful lifestyle that we share with them. I started my consulting practice to share this truth more widely than one exam room at a time.