Charlie Timmerman

 There’s some wild stuff we’re doing here,” smiles Dr. Charlie Timmerman, whose eyes widen with a passion for pets and the innovative veterinary treatments he administers with remarkable success. After 41 (and counting) years of working as a vet in Aiken, Dr. Timmerman is among few in his social circle still going full blast in his career.

“Most of my friends burned out. They didn’t do different things and got stuck in a rut, which can easily happen in any job,” he says. What Dr. Timmerman has done differently is to continually shake the spice of variety into his approach, staying abreast of new movements and discoveries in the veterinary, medical, drug and nutrition industries. “Dabble is a great word,” he laughs. “I love to dabble, to learn about new things. It keeps it interesting.”
Fifteen years ago, he took a course in chiropractic care for animals, which he says first got him outside the box of typical practice. “That opened a whole brave new world—the world of alternative medicine. You gotta have conventional medicine, but sometimes we can use alternative therapies—herbs, homotoxicology, nutrition. And energy healing—that’s my new horizon.”

Using an integrative approach, Dr. Timmerman has stopped cancer in its tracks, non-invasively removed tumors, tamed allergies, cleared inflamed and flaky skin, and restored mobility. He remembers one case in particular. A woman brought him a Doberman who was, as Dr. Timmerman describes, “four-legged down; he couldn’t move.” After six weeks of laser light therapy, the dog seemingly had new pairs of legs. “[The owner] came to me and said, ‘I honestly thought you were crazy when you said a red light was going to help my dog. Now he’s chasing cars.’”

Dr. Timmerman’s enthusiasm for healing is beyond genuine—it’s deep in his bones. Raised on a farm in Ninety Six, S.C., he saw firsthand how helping animals was a key part of life; hence, pursuing the veterinary field was a natural gravitation. After completing his undergraduate degree at Clemson University and the program at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, he came to Aiken, where he has made a legendary impact on an animal-loving community that knows him as the vet who will go to great and extraordinary measures to impart healing.

And healing is the word Dr. Timmerman prefers over cure. As he puts it, healing means improving a pet’s quality of life while the word cure focuses on the elimination of disease. “We want our pets to have meaningful lives, to be happy as long as they live.”

For Dr. Timmerman, the most challenging part about being a vet is figuring out what’s wrong with a pet when all tests show that the animal is normal. “Sometimes it’s obscure,” he says. “You have that I-just-ain’t-doing-right dog and he can’t tell you what’s wrong.” When presented with a puzzling patient, Dr. Timmerman will often turn to muscle testing, based on the internal energy fundamentals of traditional Chinese medicine. A non-invasive way of evaluating the body’s imbalances, muscle testing involves testing the body’s responses when applying slight pressure to a muscle. This provides information on energy blockages, organ function, nutritional deficiencies and food sensitivities. “The body is an amazing piece of equipment. It has all the answers. If you give it what it needs, it will heal itself.”
Truly some “wild stuff” going on at Aiken Veterinary Clinic.