Pet lovers propel rise of niche jobs

The first time Zhang Kaiyan cured an "incurable" case, it was 2012, and his patient was a paralyzed dachshund.

The dog's owner had been waking at 5:00 every morning to manually express the dog's bladder. Conventional steroid treatment had worked for a week, then failed.

Zhang, then a young veterinary student at the Heilongjiang-based Northeast Agricultural University, was told by a supervisor to "give it a try" with traditional Chinese medicine. "There were mistakes at first," he recalled.

He tried different herbal formulas for three days. Nothing worked. Then one prescription changed everything. The next day, the owner called him and shared the good news that his dog could finally pee on its own, ending the daily ritual.

That dachshund eventually walked again through Zhang's therapy. It was his first success with traditional Chinese veterinary medicine — a field that occupied just two of nearly 100 courses in his veterinary curriculum.

Today, he runs a TCVM practice in Beijing, treating animals from across China, with some clients traveling from as far as northeastern Liaoning province and renting hotels as their pets undergo weeks of treatment.

Over the years, Zhang said he has observed a shift in why people seek him out.

"Early on, most of my clients came after Western medicine had failed, and TCVM was a last resort," he said.

"Now, more owners come directly to me because they've heard about TCVM's advantages. They want to avoid surgery, or they're concerned about the side effects of long-term medications like steroid injections."

Different from Western medicine, which is excellent at diagnosis and acute care, TCVM excels at long-term management and quality of life, he noted.

"We're trained to see patterns, not just problems. Sometimes the best treatment isn't the most aggressive one, but the one that helps the animal live comfortably, with minimal intervention," he elaborated.