Canine idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a common cause of chronic abnormal gastrointestinal clinical signs and is a challenging condition to diagnose, treat and manage. There is currently no standardized treatment protocol and conventional medical treatments employed are often derived from the treatment of human IBD. Not only are there adverse effects associated with the use of these medications, but patients may fail to respond and continue to exhibit clinical signs of the disease. Research into the use of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in the treatment of human IBD has yielded some promising findings which were hypothesized as having application to successful management of canine IBD patients. The author reviewed medical records from 4 veterinary centers (Australia, United States) between 2000 and 2017 of canine patients with the histopathologic diagnosis of IBD that received CHM to treat their disease. Thirty patients with a history of IBD were submitted for review and out of this group, 8 patients satisfied all inclusion criteria for study enrollment. Retrospective review of their medical records demonstrated all study dogs exhibited improvement in clinical signs after commencing the individually prescribed CHM treatment (binomial exact test, p = 0.0078), and this occurred in 28 days or less (one-sample t-statistic, p = 0.000027). The findings of this retrospective study support the positive therapeutic role of Chinese herbal medicine in the rescue treatment of canine IBD and emphasizes a field of research with potential for growth and development.