Try a little reiki Alternative medicine for furballs with issues

Harlow Whitleigh spends her days gazing out the window of her Fishtown townhouse, eating bonbons and lounging with her best friend, a Yorkshire terrier named Rosco.

Harlow also barks. A small white bichon frise/poodle hybrid, she barks at cars, at the letter carrier, at birds, at customers coming to nearby Johnny Brenda's tavern, and at anyone walking by on the street.

Jeniphur Whitleigh and Michael Pasquarello, who own Harlow and the Loft District's Cafe Lift, have learned to live with Harlow's high-pitched ways. But when Kimberly Fleisher, the director of the Reiki School & Clinic on South Street, offered to try to reduce Harlow's anxiety with a session of reiki, the restaurateurs were happy to see if the Japanese healing method would calm Harlow down.

"She's always been very anxious. She's overanxious about everything," Pasquarello says, as Harlow races back and forth across the living room in a frenzy, jumping on and off the black leather couch.

In a reiki session, the practitioner lays hands on or above the patient in order to direct "ki," a life-force energy, at the area of difficulty and restore proper energy flow and balance. People use reiki as a complementary therapy to treat numerous conditions, including stress, anxiety, chronic pain, and the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation.

Now reiki for pets is catching on. Just as increasing numbers of pet owners have sought out conventional therapies, such as antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, to treat pet-behavior problems, many are turning to alternative medicine for their pets.

Twenty-one percent of pet owners have used some form of complementary medicine on their pets, according to the American Animal Hospital Association's 2003 National Pet Owner Survey. That's up from the 1996 survey, in which only 6 percent of pet owners said they had used alternative therapies on their pets.

Statistics on the number of pets receiving reiki are not available, though Fleisher reports that the number of requests at the Reiki School & Clinic has increased steadily in the last year. The school offers reiki sessions for $40 in the animal's home, where the pet will be most comfortable.

Harlow's reiki session starts slowly. She perches on her owner's lap, her body tensed and taut, snout thrust out in an anxious pose. Fleisher ignores Harlow at first, instead chatting with the dog's owners and petting Rosco.