Kimberly Henneman (Practice Owner & Manager)

DVM, DACVSMR (Eq,K9), FAAVA, DABT, CVA (IVAS), CVC (AVCA), CVCH (IVAS)

Dr. Kim grew up in the Salt Lake City/Park City areas, attending school as a Rowland Hall St. Mark’s lifer. She then did her pre-vet undergraduate studies at Utah State University before being accepted into veterinary school at Purdue University. After graduation in 1986 and an internship in Ireland, Dr. Kim returned to Utah where she worked at Millcreek Veterinary Clinic for several years doing both general medicine and surgery followed by several years in general practice at All Pet Complex in Taylorsville. An exposure to acupuncture while at Purdue started an interest in the modality, so she became certified in one of the early acupuncture classes held by the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society where she was taught by instructors such as Marvin Cain, Shelley Altman and Alan Schoen.

Dr. Kim then went on to become certified in Veterinary Chiropractic in 1992 (under the tutelage of AVCA founding member, Dr. Sharon Willoughby DVM, DC). The rest of the ‘90s involved classical homeopathy training with Dr. Richard Pitcairn followed by certification (IVAS) in 2000 in Veterinary Chinese Herbs with Dr. Huisheng Xie and Jake Fratkin.

Animal Health VIPS was born in 1989 when Dr. Kim recognized the need for a practical and scientific blending of the integrative therapies into more conventional Western veterinary medicine for both companion animals and horses. The goal of Animal Health VIPS was to provid integrative sports medicine for horse and dog athletes, as well as life care for all ages and health levels of cats, dogs and horses. The practice now cares for animals all over the US including in the Northern Rocky Mountains, Southwest deserts, Hawaii, Alaska & New England, providing integrative therapies, rehabilitation (physiotherapy), nutrition, and advanced diagnostic imaging such as thermal imaging, radiology and musculoskeletal ultrasound.

Coming from the performance horse world, Dr. Kim recognized early-on the importance of focused athletic health care for performance and working dogs. Her first exposure to caring for local police, detection and Avalanche rescue dogs quickly expanded to agility, conformation, obedience, sheep-herding, Barn Hunt, nosework, Avalanche, Urban and Wildland Search-And-Rescue (SAR), police/patrol/detection, protection sport and racing sled dogs. She helped organize the first Working Dog Sports Medicine clinic caring for dogs at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.

Dr. Kim is an 11-year trail veteran of the 1000-mile Iditarod Sled-Dog Race across Alaska as well as a multi-year check-in and trail veterinarian for the Pedigree Stage Stop race in Wyoming. She has mentored many veterinary students over the 18 years she has been the head veterinarian for Utah’s Soldier Hollow Sheepdog Championships. She currently pens a quarterly column in National Ski Patrol magazine discussing avalanche dog health topics.

In the horse world, Dr. Kim did both an externship and internship at a racing and farm practice in Naas, County Kildare, Ireland - it was right out of the James Herriot book, “All Creatures Great & Small”. Once home, she was one of the first veterinarians to bring acupuncture and chiropractic to horses of the West, treating everything from International FEI competitors to backyard babysitters. She has been a vet for both the US & UAE Endurance teams at the Pan Am, World Equestrian Games and World Championship competitions in the US, Spain & Dubai. She is also currently an FEI treatment veterinarian. Feeling that it makes her a better diagnostician (and because she loves it), Dr. Kim throws a leg over a horse herself and is an accomplished, N/Tr level, 3-Day Eventing rider, with numerous top placings in regional competitions.

Dr. Henneman is a popular speaker who has taught at several veterinary schools, national and state professional and military meetings, as well as at International conferences in China, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, France, the UK, Ireland and South Africa.  She speaks Portuguese fluently, is passable in Spanish and French, and knows enough Chinese and Icelandic to get into trouble. She has written articles (canine & equine) in numerous magazines as well as chapters for several textbooks. In her free time, Dr. Kim enjoys traveling with her husband, photography, learning new languages, and 3-Day Eventing - first, on her homebred TB-cross gelding, Finally Finnegan (currently in his thirties) and now on her off-the-track, QH rescue mare, Feather.

Dr. Kim is licensed in:

Alaska

Arizona

Idaho

Massachusetts

Maine

New Hampshire

Nevada

Utah

Vermont

Wyoming