Let Your Life Speak Interview: It's Never Too Late
An interview with Karen Gellman, Holistic Veterinarian
Hey, friends. I do interviews here every few months, about once per season. This late-summer interview is with Karen Gellman. Karen is, among her many wonderful qualities, a paying subscriber to the newsletter. If you’d like to share your own reflections on living into your integrity, become a paying subscriber! I’d love to share your work and wisdom.
Talking with Karen Gellman, Holistic Veterinarian
Dr. Karen Gellman holds D.V.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University in animal locomotion biomechanics. She has advanced training and certification in veterinary acupuncture and veterinary chiropractic and has practiced these and other holistic modalities since 1995. She teaches about posture, biomechanics, and holistic therapies to veterinarians worldwide, is research director of Maximum Horsepower Research, and practices holistic veterinary medicine both in New York State and on a consulting basis. In 2019, Dr. Gellman founded Plena Curae Botanical Solutions, a company making novel botanical pain medications for pets and horses.
Can you tell me who you are underneath all of your professional accomplishments, or perhaps as the foundation for all of them?
I came to veterinary medicine somewhat late in life— I was not one of those kids who always wanted to be a vet! I was a crazed classical greek scholar, a theatre director, then a lingerie designer. I worked in professional theatre, then Reagan happened, and there was no more money for the arts. I told myself a poorly conceived story: that only people who couldn’t NOT do theatre belong in professional theatre. I saw folks far less talented who seemed more driven and would do anything to develop their careers and concluded that I did not have what it takes.
I started the lingerie business because I was too young and ignorant to know I didn’t have the requisite skills in business or clothing production. By the time I acquired them, I was working for Christian Dior Lingerie and had some money (more than I would make for the next 25 years) and started riding horses again. Soon, all I could think about was horses. I wanted to spend my life with them. It was too late to be a great rider or a great trainer, but I was good at going to school— I would be a vet! And it would bring me back to Ithaca, where I did my undergrad and which I always loved.
So, to go to vet school as an “older student", I had to learn all the science I avoided as a Classics major. And I discovered that I LOVED it! And I fell in love with research as well. By the time I got to vet school, I was ready to make the intentional choice to become a teacher and researcher rather than just a practicing vet. Because I had become enthralled with physics, biomechanics was an obvious choice of study. I was lucky enough to find a fantastic mentor who connected me with some of the greatest minds in zoology and taught me how to approach the study of animals from a Big Picture perspective.
After vet school and while I was in graduate school, I began training in what was then called “alternative” medicine. I was interested in equine performance, and conventional medicine had fairly little to offer if the performance problem was not in the lower limb. I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine (acupuncture) and chiropractic manual therapy and used these modalities to treat horses. I also taught research programs at Cornell for high school students and was publishing my dissertation research on animal locomotion biomechanics. Around 2001, I met my close colleague, Dr. Judith Shoemaker, who was a highly regarded holistic veterinarian, specializing mostly in high-level performance horses. In studying her unique clinical techniques, I was able to relate them to my locomotion research and together we created a new model of understanding equine posture. We began teaching these concepts and techniques to other veterinarians as professional continuing education and received grants to research our ideas. These days, I spend less time teaching, and more writing and publishing. Too many things to do!!
I began treating more small animals (as opposed to horses) around 2010. There was a serious need in our local community for other treatment options besides drugs and surgery. My dear friend and colleague, Dr. Shoemaker, mentored me in the small animal work, and I studied herbal medicine with one of the world’s great teachers. My approach to companion animal medicine is a whole family approach— I am not only treating the animal but finding their context in their world. My superpower is sorting out the cases that drive other vets crazy— difficult, puzzling cases that don’t respond well to conventional treatments. I work with chronic diseases, cancer patients, with elderly and dying pets. To my surprise, as I settled into this work, I found that being in service to the human-animal bond is the most rewarding part of my practice.
What is a core belief you carry – about people, about relationships, or about the world – that you feel really shapes your life? How did you come to believe it?
I enter the lives of people and their pets when they are losing hope— whether from a cancer diagnosis, a frustrating illness, or just old age. One of the most relevant core beliefs in my world is “You heal until you die”. It’s never too late to improve your quality of life or even quality of death. Small animal work has an intimacy that large animal work usually (but not always) lacks because people live with their pets— they prepare every meal, carry their poop, and often sleep in the same bed. When I first start working with a patient, I spend many hours learning all about them so that I can get to the root cause of their illness. If you take the time to listen to people, relevant information will emerge. How can I make their lives better, in the context of life’s limitations, like time, money, family, etc?
Food as medicine is the most important thing I can teach my clients— it is life-changing for them and their pets. Even in our enlightened “Tiny Town”, I run across plenty of folks who feed their human families the cleanest organic meat and vegetables, yet feed their very beloved carnivore pets dry nuggets of cereal from a big bag. I help them break down the compartmentalization they have established between “people food” and “pet food”, and understand that food is food. (Except if it comes in a big bag and is shelf-stable for 2 years!)
It’s not possible to cure every animal. My most intimate *ministry* is with the dying. I help people come to terms with the limits of their pet’s life, and if appropriate and desired, support them through a natural death. People come with all kinds of baggage from other relationships that they project onto their pets. I help them separate the grief over a lost parent or partner from the grief for their pet, and support them in their pet’s journey.
What helps you to live into this belief?
It is critically important to maintain boundaries— to not get drawn into the client’s emotions. People who are desperate and grieving can lose their perspective. When I work with hospice cases, I try to teach various cultures’ beliefs about the process of dying. Often my clients and patients live far away, so my support comes as talking on the phone or in emails— being present for them when they need it.
What gets in your way of living into this core belief?
People can be demanding, and make choices that are neither in their own nor their pet’s best interest. It’s hard to say no when someone is in extremis. I can get caught up, especially when I really like the person and the pet.
What is the joy, satisfaction, or benefit for you in doing the work to live into this belief?
The deep patterns that I explain to clients about their pet’s illness make sense to them in a way that their previous vets did not. (This is not to be critical of my conventional colleagues. But the modern scientific, Western medicine paradigm is limited to biochemical interventions (pharmaceuticals) and to surgery. If neither of those treatments resolve the problem, the patient is out of luck!)
When I work this way with clients, they feel heard. They feel that someone has taken the time and the care to really think about their problems and to find a new approach to help them. When I don’t know, I have a huge network of brilliant colleagues at my back to advise me. We all do our best for them, which is deeply satisfying.
Thank you, Karen, for sharing your work and motivations with us!
Remember, friends, you can also share yourself with this wonderful community at Let Your Life Speak. Let me interview you!
This is awesome!