Tradition meets technology: A conventional vet offers non-conventional treatment

Gordon Palm, known as "Dr. J" to her clients, has been a conventional veterinarian for 42 years. She has cared for dogs, cats, lions, parakeets, tigers, deer, raptors and turtles. 

Her clients even include the famous: Gordon Palm once cared for Michael Jackson’s Burmese Python, as well as Prince’s Yorkie, Mia. While she engages in a regular veterinary practice — surgery, medication, and treatments — along the way, Gordon Palm came to believe there was both more and less she could be doing for her patients: More tools and methods, and less invasive treatments.

“I now feel I'm what I would call an ‘integrative veterinarian,’” said Dr. J, “and I've integrated a lot of the complementary therapies that I became more aware of as time went on because conventional medicine didn't have all the answers.”

While she has offered these therapies to all kinds of animals, Dr. J now primarily works with horses.

These complementary therapies include chiropractic, cranial sacral, acupressure, osteopathy, and probably what she is most known for: non-thermal laser therapy, sometimes called cold laser therapy or low-level laser therapy. She has used the technique on thousands of animals. 

Dr. J started using non-thermal lasers to treat some conditions in animals over a decade ago when it was a relatively new idea — and certainly controversial. And though the treatment is FDA-approved for humans — many professional sports teams even implement non-thermal lasers for injured athletes — she still receives skepticism from some of her colleagues.   

To say Dr. J is a character is an understatement. If she were created into an action figure, it would come with a colorful scrubs shirt, cowboy denim jeans, square-toed cowboy boots, a stethoscope, and a leather gun holster belt with several lasers mounted to it. She would be called Dr. Space Cowgirl. 

Present in the moment and intensely engaged with whomever she is with, be that human or beast, Gordon Palm lives with a core belief that both animals and humans deserve to live what she calls an “outrageous life.” She believes it is her calling to give animals the right to the five freedoms. Freedom from hunger and thirst, freedom from discomfort, freedom from pain, freedom to express normal behavior, and freedom from fear and distress.

“And that is my calling,” said Dr. J. “As a veterinarian, I want that outrageous quality of life for animals. I want that outrageous quality of life for people.” 

Dr. J has wanted that outrageous life for all living things since she was a child. She wanted it so badly, she was willing to step out of the mainstream to do it.  

In 2011, Dr. J was accepted to speak at the conference of The Association of Avian Veterinarians about using non-thermal laser therapy on birds. It was a big honor for her to do so.   

People have questions about the effectiveness of a laser that produces no heat, Gordon Palm said they question how light could possibly reach through fur or feathers. To introduce the idea and make it more approachable, Gordon Palm chose to do so outrageously: She wrote and performed a fast-paced rap about using non-thermal lasers. “From the L to the A to the S to the E to the R,” she rhymed, microphone in hand and shades pulled over her eyes.                                                             

To the room full of traditional veterinary docs, Dr. J rapped, “Yo! Make it known it’s no magic wand. But as an alternative aid, it’s da bomb … hear their needs with your ears. Don’t be led by your fears. We can heal them if we just bother to listen … Yo! Keep your hearts and minds open to change. Peace out.”

She drops the mic. The room burst into applause.  

Dr. J spent childhood summers on her grandparent's farm and lived a rather unsupervised life, she said, that permitted exploration of the outside world. She was always encountering baby chicks that had fallen out of trees and bugs stuck in the cows’ water tank, and she just naturally wanted to help these ailing creatures.  

“Seeing animals that were in need always hurt my heart,” said Dr. J. As a kid, she came up with the idea of a Bug Hospital. “I would take a cookie box that had the partitions in it. I remember there was an old cookie brand called Penguins that had perfect size little compartments for beds.” She added tissue paper to the partitions.

“Growing up on the farm, I was able to follow animals around, and that allowed me to read their body language, interact with them, and see that they are sentient beings and deserve a quality of life as importantly as people do,” she said. “So that's always been the essence of who I am."

Dr. J uses non-thermal laser on Lola's teeth and gums 

Lola the Llama is one of the resident therapy animals at Harmony Acres Equestrian Center in Loma, Colorado, about seven miles west of Fruita. Harmony Acres is a community-based equestrian center that connects people with horses and other animals in a therapeutic environment. Dr. J offers her services to the center’s animals.  

Alarain Barnhart is an animal care team member at the equestrian center and has gotten to know Dr. J’s work over the last two years.  

When asked how Dr. J measures up to other veterinarians and their modalities, Barnhart replied, “I don't even know if there is a measurement to put Dr. J with other vets,  just because of the special treatment she can do and how she's more out of the box of everybody else. She always takes that one little extra step. Whereas other vets really can't. And that's a good thing. It's a very good thing. You see results.” 

Regarding non-thermal laser therapy, Dr. J said she is sometimes frustrated that some of her colleagues remain skeptical of its positive effects.

“Not that there's anything wrong with being skeptical,” she said, “but that's been the challenge with my colleagues. They'll say, ‘I want to see the evidence-based, peer-reviewed double-blind studies on red-tailed hawks that this will speed the fracture healing.’”

Dr. J said she would like that, too. She said her profession is evolving and she is more optimistic than ever. She sees more and more Doctors being open to alternative modalities.  

Dr. J responds to skepticism by saying, “I can't ignore all of the animals that are responding in one to two treatments. It's not that they're reading a brochure that says, ‘I should be responding because my cells are activated and the nitric oxide and the reactive oxygen species and the ATP,’ …  they aren't reading that. All they know is, ‘I feel better.’”  

She is quick to tell people that non-thermal laser therapy isn’t a magic wand solution. “It works best in tandem with good nutrition, hydration,  mental enrichment, making sure they're not stressed, exercise and fresh air,” she said. “Those things will help the whole body work more efficiently.”  

“There’s just such a core reverence for animals,” Gordon Palm noted of herself as she teared up.

“ I didn’t expect this,” she added, pointing to her tears. With a quivering lip, she explained, “I think about my passion for animals … they're just so innocent. They're so innocent in their honesty. When there's a conflict with people and animals, it's usually because we've misread signals. We haven't read their request.” 

Gordon Palm’s ethos approaches both life and her clients with the love, respect and dignity she feels we all deserve.  

Cullen Purser is a multimedia journalist at Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at cullenpurser@rmpbs.org.

 Anne Keller is a film maker and the co-creator of Hot Tomato Pizza, a destination pizzaria in downtown Fruita, Colorado.