Hi, I’m Dr Edward Bassingthwaighte.

I grew up on a cattle property (ranch, for all the USA/Canadians) in North Queensland, Australia. We had beef cattle (5,000-7,000 head), and 120+ Australian Stock Horses. I cut my teeth on a saddle, and was crazy about working, training, and competing (campdrafting) on horses.

The land that held me as I grew was incredibly beautiful. I did school by mail and radio for my primary school years. In many ways, it was an idyllic childhood. But the animals were trained and worked with fear and pain-based methods. Aversive training. And the calves were fire-branded and marked without anaesthetic. Incredibly brutal!

It wasn’t until my teens, when I found a very special book— The Man Who Listens To Horses by Monty Roberts—that I started to step onto the holistic, caring, kind training path that is now my life. Monty showed me how it’s possible to communicate with animals in ways they understand, using kindness and care to build a mutual, trust- and love-filled relationship where the animals want to work with you.

I always wanted to be a vet, nearly as long as I can remember. The vets who came out to TB test cattle and tend to our animals were like gods to me. And James Herriot’s books about life as a vet were another great inspiration.

I graduated from the University of Qld with my Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree in 1995, and then went into my first job in mixed practice (small animals, beef cattle, dairy, horses). My first experiences as a vet were awful. Terrible boss, no support, overworked, underpaid, and definitely not appreciated one little bit. I toughed it out for 18 months and then left.

I spent a little time doing temporary jobs, and this is where I met a horse vet, Dr Tom Ahern, who changed the course of my life in a very beautiful way. He had developed a method of relieving pain and tension from horses’ necks. He would take a horse with a forelimb lameness—x-rayed, nerve blocked, worked up, no cause that could be found. He would mobilise the horse’s neck, relieve pain and tension, and the lameness would vanish!

I never got taught anything about this at University, and was fascinated. Dr Tom gave me a masterclass. Then I started thinking about dogs and cats, and their necks and backs. Was I missing pain? Because I didn’t know I needed to look for it.

I sure was! As soon as I started feeling into the bodies of dogs and cats with more curiosity, I found a LOT of pain and tension. I wanted to help these animals, so I started playing around with therapeutic touch. Very quickly we saw real improvements in the animals I worked with. (I learned by doing, as there were no modalities I could study way back then.)

This was my next BIG step into healing animals naturally, holistically. I have been working hands-on ever since, with every animal teaching something new (to this day). I have worked hands-on with tens of thousands of animals, and all of my experience has been distilled into what is now the Whole Energy Body Balance™ Bodywork for Pets online training programs for home and professional practitioners.

The next chapter of my veterinary journey was a stint in the United Kingdom, working as a temporary vet. I was still mostly a regular, Western medicine vet at this time, but the therapeutic touch side of my work was gently incubating away.

After 18 months in the UK, I crashed hard with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Lyme disease. I went from 70kg to 45kg in bodyweight, and was so unwell that I had to go home to the farm, and was unable to work at all for about 3 years. Western medicine helped in the beginning, but very quickly ran out of answers.

Massage helped me a LOT—and it turned out the massage therapist I visited in our local town was also a very experienced intuitive and energy healer. His work helped me more than anything else—along with another energy healer from the USA who I worked with over the internet.

My chronic illness opened me up to intuitive work, and energy healing. I studied and became a practitioner in the EMF Balancing Technique, and Reiki (neither of which I practice or use any more), and studied the work of Barbara Brennan and Cyndi Dale. I discovered that my little Staffy dog, Tikka, could sense when I was practising my energy healing, and wanted to be close to me. This was fascinating to me. How could she sense this?

I started integrating energy healing into my veterinary work, and saw the animals respond. But the vet hospitals I worked in were very closed-minded and dismissive of energy healing. That was challenging, to say the least.

In around 2005, I started my first veterinary practice as the Home Visit Vet in Townsville. This gave me the freedom to expand into holistic veterinary practice in a whole new way—I started using flower essences, homeopathy, fresh whole foods diets, and started titer testing and not blindly revaccinating every year.

WEBB Bodywork became a much bigger part of how I helped animals, and I started discovering that therapeutic touch is not only effective for relieving neck, back, and soft-tissue pain, but it helps anxious and traumatised animals heal, too.

The Whole Energy Body Balance™ method grew to a point where I started teaching WEBB Bodywork for Pets in around 2015—in person, at weekend workshops. We took WEBB online in about 2018, then added WEBB Energywork for Animals, WEBB for Humans, and more recently WEBB for Horses. We have around 50 WEBB practitioners now all around the world!

I now practice as The Healing Vet—helping people in person with home visits around Taradale, regional Victoria, here in Australia, and on Zoom all over the world, helping pets heal from all kinds of chronic illness, anxiety, trauma, allergies, cancer, and behavioural problems. And I work two days a week in the Healthy Pets Vet Clinic in Castlemaine.

I often have animals come to me whose humans have tried multiple vets, trainers, and approaches, and have not gotten the results they were looking for. Most times, my unique approach, integrating intuitive perception, energy healing, and holistic medicine (with Western medicine in my back pocket for when it’s truly needed), leads to profound healing.

I’m ADHD, autistic, and have turned my extreme sensitivity into a robust, resilient capacity to hold space for and with your pets, and you. I’m also known as The Psychic Vet, and help pets and people all over the world with intuitive readings, energy healing, and end-of-life support. I am particularly adept at supporting the energetic and spiritual transition for animals at the point of death. You can read more about how I do all of this more esoteric, intuitive work at The Psychic Vet website.

I am a musician—I’ve been an active singer/songwriter for more than 25 years—you can catch my album of conscious, heart-driven contemporary folk music This Life on all of the streaming services. I’ll be recording my second album later in 2025.

I am also a visual artist, a committed foodie (LOVE cooking), and love bushwalking, growing food, hanging with my awesome animals (Gem the wonder Whippet, at my feet right now; Mitzi the wise old fluffy guy; and Loki the tuxedo whirlwind of joy), conscious dance, and soaking up great live music.

I have a long-term, deep spiritual practice, and I’m currently studying in a 2-year intensive Paqo School with the elder mystics of the Q’ero peoples from the deep Andes in Peru, and a four-year series of vision quests led by an elder shamaness from Ecuador.

I love this blessed life, and I’d love to meet you and your pets so we can see just how much I can help! If you’d like to work with me, you can either book a session straight up, or book a free discovery call with me.