Wellness Story: Kira, Mary & Mina

Kira, Mary and Mina

We are breeders of show, performance and companion standard dachshunds and greyhounds. A couple years ago, one of our retired longhair champion females injured her neck and shoulder while chasing the cats off the deck. I knew that she needed immediate acupuncture treatments. I recalled reading in the local newspaper that Dr. Lori Blankenship was a licensed veterinary acupuncturist. I contacted her office and within a couple hours Kira had her first treatment. After three treatments, Kira was back to normal. Later, Kira developed pancreatitis. Dr. Blankenship developed a homemade diet for her and she is doing extremely well on it.

Our matriarch greyhound, Mary, was slowing down as she was aging. Also she would become very nervous when going to the vet. With Dr. Blankenship, however, Mary was relaxed and looked forward to visiting her office. After Mary’s acupuncture treatments, she would come home and jump over the baby gate at the bottom of our stairs. The most wonderful tribute was Mary winning the veteran sweepstakes at the Greyhound Specialty in 2010 at the age of 12, moving better than many of the younger dogs entered at the show. The crowd was amazed that a 12-year-old greyhound would still be alive and still move as well as Mary did that day.

Mina, our grand champion wire dachshund, was diagnosed with bladder stones. We decided to talk with Dr. Blankenship about alternatives to surgery. She developed a diet and prescribed Chinese herbs for Mina. Within a few months, the stones had totally disappeared. With the continued prescribed homemade diet developed by Dr. Blankenship, Mina has continued to be healthy and stone free for more than one year now and continues to win at dog shows.

— Dr. Andrew, Dianne and Kandice | Brandy Station, Va.