Dr. Shauna Cantwell is an internationally recognized veterinarian with a wide and comprehensive medical and animal background.She began mixed animal practice in 1989, and also practiced in small animal and emergency clinics for many years in Canada. She later specialized in veterinary anesthesiology with a special interest in pain management while gaining a Master’s degree, and was on faculty at the University of Florida for ten years.
Through that time, Dr. Cantwell became certified in veterinary acupuncture and chiropractic. She has been studying functional neurology in body systems and applies it to her patients through Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine, chiropractic, postural rehabilitation and other alternative therapies. She currently divides her time between acupuncture research at the University of Florida, teaching chiropractic and pain management to veterinarians, teaching acupunctureat the Chi Institute of TCVM, and practicing complementary and integrative medicine for horses, dogs and cats.
She is on the Research Committee for the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, the examination and certification commission for the American Canadian College of Animal Chiropractic, the advisory board for the American Journal of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine and has served on multiple educational committees at the University of Florida. She has written articles on pain management including Equine Analgesia, (a chapter in an Equine Surgery veterinary textbook), and Ancillary and Alternative Pain Management for Small Animals in the BSAVA textbook of Veterinary Anesthesiology.
Besides anesthesiology consultation, her practice encompass sports medicine for the elite athlete, injury and neurologic therapy, and holistic medicine for both illness and wellbeing. Her career goal is to create a new and more expansive veterinary medicine and to demonstrate how alternative medicine can be integrated with conventional medicine to improve the wellbeing of individual animals.
Dr. Cantwell grew up on the bare back of a horse, has competed with Arabians in the western circuit in the 80’s, and has shown competitive dressage to third level in the 90’s. She has bred and raised warmbloods. She now lives in NW Ocala.
Dr. Cantwell’s Ocala office is located in The Golden Hills Center at the junction of Rts. 27 and 225A beside the Horse and Hound restaurant and the Winning Edge tackshop.