Traditional Chinese medicine is taught at UC Davis Vet School. The AVMA has recognised veterinary acupuncture since the 1980s. A friend's 12-year-old Labrador gets needled every two weeks for joint pain and walks out better than he walked in. This is what I found when I stopped dismissing it and started reading the research.
I have a confession. A few years ago, if you had mentioned acupuncture in front of me, I would have smiled politely and changed the subject. I had a specific idea of who believed in it, and I did not put myself in that category.
Then my sinuses started giving me serious trouble. The kind where you wake up at 3am and your entire face aches. I tried the usual things. Antihistamines helped somewhat. Nasal sprays helped somewhat. But it kept coming back. On the advice of someone I trust, I went to a TCM practitioner. Acupuncture, specific herbs, a few dietary changes. I went in prepared to be unimpressed. Within about three sessions, something had genuinely shifted. My nose cleared. The morning congestion that had been a fixture of my life for two years stopped being a daily thing. I'm not going to overclaim what happened — I don't know exactly which part of it worked, or why — but something did.
That experience made me curious enough to actually look at the research instead of dismissing it. And when I looked at it in the context of dogs, what I found was more substantial than I expected.
TCM is not a single treatment. It is a framework that includes several distinct modalities: acupuncture, herbal medicine, food therapy, and a form of therapeutic massage called tui na. They share an underlying model of health — one built around concepts like Qi (vital energy) and the body's natural tendency toward balance — but in practice they work quite differently and have different evidence bases. Putting them in a single bucket and asking "does TCM work?" is a bit like asking "does Western medicine work?" The answer depends entirely on which part you're asking about, and for which condition.
This post focuses on acupuncture, because that is where the veterinary evidence is strongest and most accessible. The food therapy side of TCM — what to feed a dog based on their constitution and the season — is covered in detail in our Holistic Diet guide and the TCM dog food deep dive. The herbs are getting their own post, because they deserve more space than a paragraph.
Fine needles placed at specific points to stimulate nerve pathways. Best-evidenced modality in veterinary TCM. Recognised by the AVMA since the 1980s.
Plant and mushroom compounds with active pharmacological effects. Some very well-researched (turkey tail, astragalus), some to avoid entirely in dogs.
Selecting foods based on their energetic properties — cooling, warming, or neutral — matched to the dog's constitution and current health state.
Therapeutic massage along meridian lines. Often used alongside acupuncture. Beneficial for mobility, circulation, and stress in senior dogs.
The usual dismissal of veterinary acupuncture goes something like this: it's a placebo, it's unscientific, and vets who practice it are a bit out there. I held some version of this view myself. Here is why it does not hold up well when you actually look at what the profession says.
The International Veterinary Acupuncture Society has been certifying veterinary acupuncturists since 1974. That is over 50 years, across more than 40 countries. The Chi Institute — based in Florida — has trained thousands of vets and offers a veterinary acupuncture certification that takes 120 contact hours to complete. This is not a fringe activity. It is a post-graduate discipline that licensed vets pursue after completing their standard degrees.
The American Veterinary Medical Association formally recognised veterinary acupuncture in the 1980s as a legitimate therapeutic modality. Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine — two of the most respected veterinary schools in the world — both teach it and offer it to patients. These are institutions with strong commitments to evidence-based medicine. They are not prone to including things in their curricula because they sound interesting.
Intervertebral disc disease (IVDD): A 2010 controlled study by Joaquim et al. compared veterinary acupuncture combined with standard medical management to standard management alone in dogs with IVDD. The acupuncture group showed significantly better neurological recovery rates. IVDD is a major cause of paralysis and pain in dogs, particularly dachshunds and similar breeds.
Musculoskeletal pain: Multiple peer-reviewed studies and systematic reviews have found acupuncture effective for chronic pain management in dogs with osteoarthritis and joint degeneration. The mechanism is not mystical — acupuncture at specific points stimulates local nerve endings, releases endorphins, and modulates pain-signalling pathways. This is measurable neurophysiology.
Cancer patients: Veterinary acupuncture is used at major oncology centres to manage pain and treatment side effects in dogs undergoing chemotherapy. The Animal Cancer Care and Research Program at Virginia Tech incorporates it as a standard supportive care option.
Systematic reviews: A 2011 review in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine analysed published veterinary acupuncture studies and found positive evidence for pain conditions, IVDD, and several chronic conditions. The reviewers noted the overall evidence quality was moderate and called for larger trials — which is honest, and a fair characterisation of where the field was.
Before I go any further with the research, let me tell you about the Labrador.
A close friend of mine has a 12-year-old Labrador named Chester. At 10, Chester started going downhill physically. Slow on the stairs. Reluctant to jump in the car. Stiff in the mornings in a way that was hard to watch. The vet confirmed significant joint degeneration, which is completely normal in a large, active dog at that age. Chester was on anti-inflammatories, which helped, but the improvement plateaued.
Her vet suggested adding veterinary acupuncture every two weeks. My friend is a paediatrician. She does not do things because they sound nice. She took some convincing. But she tried it, and she kept doing it because the results were obvious enough that she could not justify stopping. Chester walks into the clinic now, gets comfortable on the mat, and visibly relaxes during the session. I have seen it. He is looser afterwards. More willing to move. More himself. He is still 12, with the joints of a 12-year-old Lab. But he is managing significantly better than he was.
Is this a controlled trial? No. Could it be a combination of the acupuncture and the ongoing anti-inflammatories? Yes. But my friend has tried dropping the frequency and the decline was noticeable. She is not a placebo-prone person. She would tell me if she thought it was doing nothing.
Stories are not data. But they are also not nothing. And this one is consistent with what the published data on acupuncture for canine osteoarthritis actually shows.
One of the things that put me off TCM for a long time was the language around it. Qi. Meridians. Energy pathways. If you have a scientific mindset, that vocabulary is a barrier. It sounds like a belief system, not a therapy.
Here is a more grounded way to understand what veterinary acupuncture is actually doing, stripped of the traditional framing. When a fine needle is inserted at specific points — points that correspond remarkably closely to anatomically identifiable nerve clusters, muscle trigger points, and fascial junctions — it triggers a measurable physiological response. Local inflammation at the needle site causes the release of endorphins and encephalins, the body's natural pain-suppressing compounds. Stimulation of specific nerve fibres modulates pain signals travelling to the spinal cord. In electroacupuncture (where a small current is passed through the needles), the neurological effects are even more measurable.
None of that requires you to believe in Qi. It requires you to accept that inserting needles at precise locations in the body produces real, measurable physiological effects. That is not a controversial claim. It is the basis of every injection a doctor gives.
The reason acupuncture points were identified and systematised in traditional Chinese medicine long before modern neuroscience existed is interesting, not damning. Many plants were used medicinally for centuries before we understood why they worked. Understanding the mechanism came later. The effect came first.
This matters. TCM and acupuncture are not good for everything, and proponents who claim otherwise do the whole field a disservice.
If your dog has a bacterial infection, they need antibiotics. If they have a tumour, they need an oncologist. If they are having a cardiac event, they need emergency veterinary care. TCM is an adjunct and a complement to Western medicine, not a replacement for it. Any veterinary acupuncturist worth their certification will tell you the same thing. The ones who suggest otherwise — who tell you to ditch your dog's conventional medications for herbs and needles — are the outliers you should walk away from.
The clearest applications are chronic pain management, musculoskeletal rehabilitation, neurological recovery, and quality-of-life support in senior dogs. These are areas where conventional medicine often reaches a ceiling — where you have controlled the acute problem but the dog is still uncomfortable, still stiff, still not quite right. That is exactly where TCM tends to add value rather than duplicate it.
Veterinary acupuncture has a more credible evidence base than I expected when I started looking. The institutional backing — AVMA recognition, training at major vet schools, 50 years of an international professional society — tells you this is not a fringe hobby. The research on pain and IVDD is genuinely promising, and the mechanistic explanation is grounded in real neuroscience.
The evidence for some other TCM modalities is thinner and more mixed. Food therapy has a coherent logic and some research support, but less rigorous trial data than acupuncture. Herbal medicine is complicated: some herbs have excellent scientific backing and work through clearly understood pharmacological pathways; others have no good evidence or are actively dangerous for dogs. That post is coming next.
My position after doing this research: for a senior dog with chronic pain or a dog recovering from spinal or musculoskeletal injury, a certified veterinary acupuncturist is a completely reasonable addition to their care team. Not instead of their regular vet. Alongside. The two approaches are complementary and most good vets will say so.
And for anyone who is still suspicious: I understand. I was too. But "I don't understand how this works" and "this doesn't work" are not the same thing. The research on acupuncture is clear enough that the first objection is no longer a good reason for the second.
The two main directories are the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS) at ivas.org and the Chi Institute at tcvm.com. Look for the CVA credential — Certified Veterinary Acupuncturist. This means the practitioner is a licensed vet who has completed formal post-graduate training in animal acupuncture, not just a human acupuncturist who works on animals on the side.
A first session will typically involve a thorough history and assessment before any needles appear. A good veterinary acupuncturist will want to know your dog's full medical history, current medications, and what you are hoping to address. They should be willing to communicate with your regular vet. If they are not, that is a red flag.
For most pain and mobility applications, sessions run 20 to 40 minutes and are typically scheduled every one to two weeks initially, with frequency reducing as the condition stabilises. Chester goes fortnightly and has done for two years. That is a relatively long maintenance schedule, but his results have been consistent enough that his owner has not tried to reduce it further.
Coming next in the TCM series
Part 2 covers what's actually worth adding to your dog's routine — and what to avoid. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.
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