The 1,650-pound, 12-year-old Percheron/paint cross took a few steps, collapsed, and struggled to get up. When he got to his feet, he was walking like a drunken sailor.

Jack was rushed to Tufts’ large animal hospital in Grafton, where his condition deteriorated rapidly, requiring him to be stabilized in a full-body sling suspended from the ceiling. After weeks of tests and prodding, but no significant improvement, veterinarians gave the dire news that it was unlikely he’d leave the hospital alive.

“There was nothing I could do; he was a diagnostic mystery. I had lost hope,” recalled a teary Rosse, who owns Darmore Farm in Rowley.  So she sought help from a different kind of specialist — James Salvia, an intuitive energy healer. Via cellphone, he “read” Jack. The horse communicated to James that he felt fine, there was nothing wrong with him, and he was more concerned with Rosse’s emotional turmoil following the recent deaths of loved ones, including her mother.

Relieved to be told that her horse was not concerned about his own illness, Rosse found new hope that he’d beat the odds and recover. Now, 2½ months later, he’s home and nearly his old self again.

“It’s not me, it’s spirit, it’s energy,” said Salvia, a self-described animal communicator, energy healer, and specialized kinesiologist from Natick, who helped Rosse persevere while Jack got on his feet again.“I’m just a vessel.”

You might call him the “horse whisperer,” but that name’s already been taken.

What Salvia does through his practice, “The Whole Body,” is a mixture of science, mysticism, and a bit of the unexplained.

Much like Monty Roberts,  who promotes the concept of natural horsemanship by learning a horse’s language, and Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for the novel and film “The Horse Whisperer,” Salvia says he communicates with animals with a goal to clear, tune, and balance their energy patterns, and remove “blocks.”

Using kinesiology — a form of muscle testing — various essences, crystals, and the intuition of his hands, he seeks to identify harmony and disharmony, balance and imbalance, and works to actuate, encourage, or disrupt energy flow in both animals and their two-legged counterparts.

Still, when asked, it’s hard for the soft-spoken and contemplative Salvia to find words to explain precisely what he does, or how. It’s intangible, more of a feeling.

“I wish I could tell you how it works,” said Salvia, who also is employed in a much more grounded and clinical (but similarly healing) profession, as a paramedic for the city of Boston. “I just have to trust it.”

It’s an intuition he has fostered for years; he said he’s long felt he had a sort of gift, an ability to feel, sense, and know things about animals and other people.

But it wasn’t until the late 1990s that he began looking into alternative forms of healing (initially for himself), such as natural essences, crystals, and the Seneca philosophy taught by the Native people of western New York — based on identifying a person’s purpose on earth, unique gifts, and talents – and specialized kinesiology.

First, he practiced what he learned on people – or “two-legged animals” as he likes to say – but soon expanded to horses, dogs, and cats. Through various sessions (over the phone or in person), he helps animals and “their people” — he doesn’t like to use the term “owner” — get through various physical and emotional issues.

He recalled one horse that he worked with: Her human caretakers wanted her to be a show horse, but in “talking” with her, he learned that she wanted to be a mother. She’s since been a successful broodmare.

In another instance, with a different horse at Rosse’s farm, he homed in on an orthopedic issue with a forefoot, which he saw as “black.” It turned out to be ringbone, extra-bony growth near the hoof that was so small, it could not be detected by the eye.

Just as humans do, animals like to have a job, a purpose, something to believe in, he said, and his work — although he acknowledges that some think it’s “crazy” — is about “honoring the animal.”

Where that can get stuck is in the unintended transfer of stress and anxiety.