Many folks are curious about how I found my way to homeopathy, about my allopathic training, and about other aspects of my background. In response, here is a bit of my personal history. 

I grew up in northern New Jersey, and knew by the time I was eight years old that I wanted to be a veterinarian. As you might expect, I had all of the usual pets, and a few unusual ones. My thanks to my Mom and Dad for their patience and support through an endless succession of furred, feathered, scaled and shelled critters that I brought home. ("I'll take care of him, Mom. I promise!")

In my teens, I bred and showed tropical fish. This is the earliest experience I can recall that started me thinking more holistically. I discovered that my fish bred more successfully, and were more disease resistant, when fed live food (brine shrimp, tubifex worms) than when given commercial 'fish food'. Hmmm...

In college, I couldn't have a dog or a cat, so I got a boa constrictor named Owsley. I had Owsley for 16 years, and even managed to find him a mate. Imagine coming home from a backpacking trip to find 15 baby boas swarming around the habitat!

I'd like to think that my considerable adolescent rebelliousness eventually matured into a healthy nonconformity. In any case, I've always thought for myself, and so it's not surprising that by the time I finished veterinary school I had already joined the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, and was particularly interested in nutrition. I quickly embraced and studied herbal medicine, and explored kinesiology, electroacupuncture, and other holistic modalities.

None of that, however, prepared me for my introduction to homeopathy. I moved to Santa Cruz, California in 1983, and met Dr. Richard Pitcairn, who was also living there at the time. He encouraged me to learn about homeopathy, but in my youthful arrogance I felt that I was doing just fine, thank you, with my nutrition and herbs. Then came a case that completely stymied my every effort to help. She was a German Shepherd named Halley who was dying from a chronic cough. Seriously! She had been coughing day and night for weeks, could not eat or sleep, had become emaciated, and was headed toward death. Nothing that I did, including allopathic drug treatment, had any effect whatsoever. Finally, Lori, Halley's caretaker, called to ask me if she could try a homeopathic remedy, Arsenicum album, which had been recommended by a human homeopath she knew. To make a long story short, the Arsenicum quickly cured the cough. It turns out that Halley had been treated for heartworms three years earlier, and arsenic is the active ingredient in the drug that had been given. The drug had induced a state like chronic arsenic poisoning. Thus, I had my first lesson in Similia Similibus Curentur: like cures like.

Needless to say, I was blown away. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for Richard's very first homeopathy workshop.

Homeopathy is more than a system of medicine; it is a way of thinking. Learning to think homeopathically is like learning to think in a different language. Not everyone is able to make the paradigm shift necessary to change from allopathic to homeopathic thinking. It turned out that I have a certain aptitude for this very unique system of medicine and thought.

I have continued to study all these years with some of the best teachers in the world. Along with the advancement of my homeopathic skills, and, in part, as a result of my own homeopathic treatment, I have also experienced considerable personal and spiritual growth. To paraphrase Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, in the first paragraph of his Organon, it all works together in the wondrous process of living life and striving to achieve one's highest potential.