Dr. Huisheng Xie, a University of Florida veterinarian, researcher and instructor, is using the 2,000-year-old Chinese practice to get horses back on their feet, birds flying and dogs romping again in the park.

And unlike human acupuncture, which has patients who expect to feel good afterward, animals experience no "placebo effect." It is easy to tell if the treatment works because if it does, the animal's performance changes dramatically.

Xie (pronounced Shay) was born in China. He has worked on everything from eye problems in a tiny lizard to shoulder arthritis in a retired elephant. He's treated many horses for a potentially career-ending windpipe malady, and has also used acupuncture to make them sweat better, keeping them cool.

Linda Ziegler says Xie's acupuncture has been very helpful for her 17 ?year-old Calle Royale, a pure-bred Arabian with arthritis of the hocks -- a joint in the horse's leg.

FIRST PATIENT

Before she began the first of five treatments earlier this year, Calle Royale didn't want to jump and she shuffled to the left during dressage, a series of precise maneuvers.

Calle Royale was Xie's first patient of the day during a recent session. He sometimes works on 10 horses a day.

Xie attached small electrical wires to 10 needles inserted throughout Calle Royale's lower back. Her skin twitched during the 10-minute treatment that sent out tiny electrical impulses.

After her treatments, she is fine, Ziegler said.

"This has helped more than any other thing that I have tried," said Ziegler, who had brought her horse from Tallahassee for treatments.

Acupuncture sessions cost $80 to $200, depending on the animal. A standard treatment usually involves three visits. Xie said there are about 1,300 vets in the country who use acupuncture and about 100 in Florida.

"We get a lot of cases where traditional medicine has no answers or it is not an option," said Xie, 40, whose first case in China years ago was a water buffalo with a serious digestive problem.

These days he does a lot of work on horses with ligament and tendon problems or back pain.

He has also worked on rabbits, dogs and other small animals. He's relieved a lizard's eye problems, and cured a cockatoo's disc ailment.

Xie was even called in to relieve arthritis pain in an elephant.

Xie acknowledges that acupuncture and herbal medicines are not the cure for every animal problem. They are most often used in conjunction with other treatments. Sometimes acupuncture is the treatment of last resort.

Most vets practice Western medicine, but at least some don't object to acupuncture.

"I don't practice [acupuncture] but I believe in it, and I've sent some of my patients, most who've had fairly positive results," said Dr. Stephen Sheldon, former president of the South Florida Veterinary Medical Association who recently moved his practice to Colorado.

He said he has referred animals in chronic pain, particularly dogs with arthritis.

"I don't think because we are Western-trained veterinarians that we know everything there is to know," Sheldon said.

Acupuncture is part of the university's new program for "alternative and complimentary medicine," explained Dr. Eleanor Green, chairwoman and chief of staff of the Large Animal Hospital at the University of Florida.

LITTLE RESEARCH

Acupuncture has been practiced for thousands of years, Green said, but there has been little scientific study on when, how and why it works on animals. UF is one of the first colleges to launch a program to do that study, she said.

Acupuncturists like Xie use thin needles of varying lengths, inserted in any 173 points on a horse's body, to promote the flow of the life energy, Qi, to allow the body to heal itself.

"Acupuncture has only recently been a tool that we farm managers have had," said George Isaacs, who manages Bridlewood Farm, a well-known thoroughbred breeding and training facilities in Ocala.

Xie is the first to concede that no one knows exactly how acupuncture works.

"For me, the best medicine is a balance of both" ancient Chinese medicine and modern medicine, Xie said. "Each side has its own beauty."

From Healthy.net