Dr Sonja Pieters is a female Veterinarian.
Dr Sonja was born and raised in South Africa. She knew from a very young age that she wanted to work with animals in their natural environment. Driven by volunteer work in the zoo and childhood vacations in Kruger National Park, she wanted to become a game ranger, managing wildlife in a game reserve. But after her postgrad studies in Wildlife Management, and working as a game farm manager of a private game reserve, she still felt unfulfilled. She longed for a more stimulating and challenging career. She went back to University and Graduated as a vet at University of Pretoria in 2008. While studying she discovered a whole new world of complementary and alternative medicine in the university library, even though it wasn’t taught to students. She also attended a course on environmental enrichment in zoo animals.
She worked in rural mixed practice in a wildlife rich area for the next 11 years where she became self-sufficient in dealing with emergencies, surgery and a wide variety of clinical cases in many different types of animals.
She then got an opportunity to join her siblings in Australia and was fortunate to get valuable experience in a busy, gold standard small animal clinic in the Gold Coast where she worked for 2 years. She realised that having a time limit for consultations, trying to examine scared animals before getting them to relax, in a noisy clinic environment wasn’t how she wanted to practice as a vet. She also wanted to explore complementary and alternative medicine and examine animals in a more relaxing way, helping them to feel safe and enjoy their visits. She continues to learn about Chinese medicine, acupuncture, laser and behaviour training and strives to provide holistic veterinary care.
