Nine-year-old Dewey rested her head in Sharon Cerkan’s lap as the doctor poked a series of needles into her damaged hip.

Cerkan kept Dewey calm as electrical currents charged through the pins and shot into muscle. Some 25 minutes later, after the acupuncture session had ended, Dewey rose without hesitation and ran off to the family van.

Dewey, a Chesapeake Bay retriever/black Labrador mix who lives with Cerkan and her husband, Dan, in Carlsbad, is among the growing number of pets in America being treated with everything from acupuncture to herbal therapy for ailments and diseases that traditional medicine has failed to cure.

“It’s becoming more mainstream, and the reason it’s becoming more mainstream is it’s effective,” said Dr. Kathy Boehme, a veterinarian and partner at The Drake Center for Veterinary Care on El Camino Real in Encinitas, where Dewey goes for acupuncture treatments every three weeks.

Boehme calls the strategies used at her clinic integrative medicine. “We’re integrating Eastern medicine with Western medicine,” she said earlier this month.

Figures are unavailable, but veterinarians who practice alternative medicine say business is booming. A growing number of veterinary schools, including those at Colorado State, Louisiana State and the University of Florida, incorporate integrative medicine into their programs.

“Our membership has grown substantially over the years,” said Simon Flynn, the American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture’s executive director. The group now has 825 licensed veterinarians.

“People want every advantage brought to their animal that they can find,” he said.

Susan Wynn, president of the American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture and the former president of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, said more people are accepting alternative care for their pets because more people are open to alternative care for themselves.

She added that people often seek alternatives “because scientifically proven medicine has failed them.”

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