Herminated thoratic disc

Generally speaking you always treat as completely as possible - you will get better results. Some of the basic ideas of point selection are in my article “acupuncture point treatment plan - general point selection rules”.

Generally about 1/3 of the points are for the patients root diagnosis, 1/3 are for the localized issues or how the imbalance in manifesting and about 1/3 are between those two and may change with other correspondences (seasons, time of day, other acute unrelated issues, etc.).

Not knowing all the details, your points seem fine but I would likely add GB 34, GV 20 and the huatuo area of T9-T12. And very likely some other work further down the spine.

If you’re asking if you should alternate between using GB 34 and GB 39, you can just use both. GB 34 is a helpful point for any soft tissue injury, while GB 39 helps with marrow and bone related injury. For neurological conditions use DU 20 (same point as GV 20 just a different naming scheme so you dont confuse it with GB 20).

The number of needles and whether you apply even needling or use tonification and sedation techniques is really up to the training, preference and clinical experience of each individual practitioner. Generally there are no rules (including with animals).

There are systems, some Japanese in particular, that only use a few points and other systems that use many.

All I would say is to have a very good reason for each point you are using and then if you end up with 7 or if you end up with 25 that is fine. There are, of course, detailed considerations (use less needles on weaker patients, generally, possibly more or at least less restrictive on stronger patients as an example), but there are no hard rules in Chinese Medicine. In fact having them limits a medicine that technically thrives due to it’s ability to adapt to each individual patient.

With regards to diagnoses - you want to think deeply about people who have multiple potential tcm diagnoses and figure out which one is the deepest. You generally focus on the deepest causal factor, but even that cannot be a hard rule as there are order of treatment relevant to the layers of diagnoses a person has. Clearing damp, before tonifying as a simple example.