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Just over a decade ago, Bette Loughran noticed her dog becoming violently ill after eating the commercial pet food she'd been buying for years.

Loughran, a Connecticut resident, called customer service, and the company responded promptly by sending her a new bag. "I thought, 'Cool — a free bag of food!' " she recalled.

That bag, however, turned out to be worse, and Babe, a 9-year-old golden retriever-Labrador mix, became even sicker. Loughran rushed Babe to an animal hospital. But the aflatoxin mold in the food — which showed up in another brand last December and forced a recall — had taxed her kidneys and heart to the breaking point.

That's when Loughran learned about the raw diet, a regimen consisting of bones, raw meat and supplements, and decided to start her own pet food company, Bravo (which stands for bones, raw ground meat, all natural, vegetables and organ meat). She distributes the frozen pet food to online retailers and pet stores.

Since Babe died, Loughran has kept her four other show dogs on the diet. She says they have more energy, better skin, brighter eyes and less body fat.

Loughran sees the raw diet as part of an all-natural approach to caring for her dogs. The raw diet, in fact, is just one of many unconventional approaches to pet care that have become more popular. Many pet owners are taking their dogs and cats to veterinarians who prescribe treatments ranging from raw-meat diets to acupuncture, chiropractic procedures, aromatherapy and herbal supplements.

But like alternative medicine for humans, holistic veterinary care includes many treatment options that have not been tested. In February, a study published in the Journal of American Veterinary Medicine concluded that the potential for food-borne illnesses makes the raw food diet too risky for dogs and for the people who prepare the food.

Alternative veterinary care in the United States started in the early 1970s, around the time that Americans first learned about acupuncture after President Richard Nixon's historic trip to China. But the field has really taken off over the last decade.

The most scientifically accepted alternative treatment is acupuncture, which studies have shown can help animals heal by stimulating nerves.

Interest in alternative treatments reaches well beyond academia. Dr. Gary Van Engelenburg graduated from veterinary school in 1972 and treated pets using conventional methods for 20 years before he learned about animal acupuncture in 1991.

Van Engelenburg said that if a dog is brought to a clinic with hip dysplasia, a conventional practitioner would reach for pain medicine. But Van Engelenburg prescribes herbal supplements, performs acupuncture and makes diet recommendations. If a cat comes in with diabetes, he'll avoid prescribing insulin and instead suggest putting the cat on a raw-meat diet, which he says helps 95 percent of animals in two weeks.

But often alternative treatments have not been tested, and some veterinarians say they're dangerous. Little is known about how animals metabolize raw food and herbal remedies. And with chiropractic procedures, doctors aren't sure how much force animals can stand.

There's a lesser-known Japanese treatment called gold bead implants, used for younger pets that suffer from arthritis, epilepsy or spinal disorders. In this treatment, an animal is anesthetized and injected with hundreds of gold or stainless steel beads through 14-gauge hypodermic needles into muscle tissue in the back, hips or shoulders — what doctors consider permanent acupuncture.

"It's like magic if it's done properly," Van Engelenburg said. "I've never seen a negative effect."

But Dr. Narda Robinson, who heads the complementary and alternative medicine program at Colorado State University's School of Veterinary Medicine, has seen negative results.

One dog was brought in after receiving the treatment for arthritis. The pet's owner wondered why the dog was still limping, and the doctors suspected a tumor. The only way they could find out for sure was with an MRI, but the doctors couldn't administer one because there was so much metal in the dog's body from the implants.

"Because of the implants, there was nothing we could do," Robinson said.

Perhaps the most controversial alternative treatment is the raw diet. Advocates accuse traditional veterinarians of resisting change and fill Internet message boards with positive testimonials.

But some pet owners say their animals have died when bones became lodged in their gastrointestinal tracts. Robinson says dogs on the diet have been hospitalized with bacterial infections from E. coli and salmonella, which can be in raw food.

Loughran, however, believes her dogs are much healthier eating raw, and her customers think the same thing about their pets.