In the bustling San Francisco market of Quito, Ecuador’s highland capital, a centuries-old Andean spiritual tradition is adapting to meet a modern, 21st-century need. Traditional local healers known as curanderas have carved out a unique new niche, offering energy cleansing rituals called limpias to the furry companions of anxious, doting pet owners.
What began as a practice to clear physical, emotional, and spiritual blockages for human clients now extends to dogs, cats, rabbits, and even farm animals across the country. For devotees of the ritual, the treatment works to unblock blocked energy centers, or chakras, in animals, just as it does for people. Healers use a blend of ancestral tools: fragrant wild-harvested medicinal herbs, purifying smoke, raw farm eggs, and sacred Amazonian seeds to draw out negative energy and fend off harmful spiritual influences.
Fifth-generation healer Nancy Correa comes from a long line of female curanderas, and she says her pet cleansing services have grown steadily in popularity in recent years. When 1-year-old golden retriever Lucas arrived at her stall after a frightening run-in with a neighborhood cat left him withdrawn and anxious, Correa pulled together a bundle of wild amaranth, rue, nettle, and eucalyptus to rub over his fur. She selects these specific herbs, she explains, because they grow wild in mountain ravines, absorbing the pure combined energy of water, air, and Andean sunshine.
Lucas’s owner Ximena Tixi, a 49-year-old Quito architect, says she has already seen dramatic improvements after just two cleansing sessions. “He’s more active now, and he no longer carries that fear he had after the encounter,” she told Agence France-Presse. By the time Lucas showed up for his third session, he trotted willingly into Correa’s stall, his tail wagging with no sign of his earlier anxiety.
A short walk away at the same market, fellow healer Amparo Lugmana recently led a cleansing ritual for her own 4-year-old mixed-breed dog Copito, who had been listless and “feeling down” for weeks. Lugmana rubbed rose petals, a raw egg, and healing herbs over Copito’s thick white curly fur, before finishing the ritual by tying a necklace of Amazonian huayroro seeds around his neck — a traditional charm meant to ward off negative energy and evil spirits.
Lugmana is no stranger to treating animal clients: she has worked on cats, rabbits, and even ships post-treatment cleansing kits to rural areas for owners of cows and chickens that have stopped producing milk or eggs. The cost of a pet limpia ranges from just $5 to $10, depending on the size of the animal, making the ancient ritual accessible to many local pet owners.
For Quito’s pet parents, the practice offers a low-cost, culturally rooted alternative to modern behavioral interventions for anxious or withdrawn pets, filling a gap between standard veterinary care and holistic wellness that resonates with Ecuador’s deep Andean cultural heritage.