By SHARON KILPATRICK

By SHARON KILPATRICK

Rappahannock News Staff Writer

Fay Witherell is hoping her Horse and Hound Home Veterianry Care practice will expand in Rappahannock.

Operating out of her home on the Fodderstack Road, Ms. Witherell makes house calls. In fact her practice is entirely house calls. The licensing requirements for veterinary clinic would require a major investment. “I’m about $250,000 short of what it would take to do that,” she said.

However, there are definite advantages to a practice based on house calls, she said. The animals respond better to being treated in familiar surroundings.

Ms. Witherell performs a whole range of veterinary services, “vaccinations, regular illnesses, anything that doesn’t require hospitalization,” she said. But her first love is accupuncture.

She returned to Rappahannock County in 1990 after seven years in New York as the director of a zoo in Queens.

While she was still in New York but preparing to make the move back to Rappahannock, she signed up to take a course in acupuncture. She said she had first heard about using acupuncture in veterinary medicine at a meeting of veterinarians in Washington, D. C. 10 years ago.

Then in the spring of 1989 she attended a two-day course in Las Vegas. She realized if she was serious about using acupuncture in her practice, she would have to take the full course.

She attended four four-day sessions over a six month period. The classes were offered at a motel near the airport in Tampa, Florida. For practice they .worked on racing greyhounds who were brought to the motel for the students to learn on. She said they also visited horse farms in the area to learn acupunture for horses, and a few cows were also brought to the motel for the students.