Pets are Talking

Understanding is a Verb: Binah from the Other Side

Theword "Binah" is Hebrew for understanding. So when my friend, Carolyn, from Wales, asked me to talk with her friend's dog, Binah, I thought, "Interesting. I wonder what this dog will tell me."

It turns out, Binah  is a West Highland White Terrier.   Westies are the little generals of the canine world. They tend to be bossy and forthright and sometimes a little bit rude. 

Binah is none of those things. She is the other kind of Westie, the one that is gracious and funny and excited and kind. 

In fact, she got me to rethink my thoughts on the Westie, and also to give myself a little talking to about lumping a whole breed into one category. Goodness. 

Binah passed away suddenly. Her Mum, Lynne, was quite distraught. 

Her first question asked if Binah was okay. Binah came through loud and clear, "Of course!"

Then she wanted to know who Binah was with.

Binah showed me a big brownish-grey dog. They were in a field, with trees on the sides, birch trees. It looked like a crisp fall day. They were playing. 

I told Binah's owner this, and I just heard a little gasp, and then nothing. And then I heard, "That's Calon!" 

Calon was Lynne's Irish wolfhound that had passed away before. 

Then I started crying. 

Calon is Welsh for "Heart". So "Heart" and "Understanding" were playing in a field.

Binah's Mum wondered if there was anything that they should have done to try to save Binah's life. 

Binah told us that it was her time to go, because she was going to go live with a boy in Sussex, who really needed her. 

Everytime I asked Binah a question, I'd have to call her back from playing.  Her mum said that Binah was like that in real life too. At the park, every other second, Binah was distracted into playing, couldn't keep her attention long at all. 

It turns out Calon had a day off. He has a job in heaven. Many animals do. Calon's job is to greet new arrivals, and show them around. I think it must be lovely to be met in heaven by a big wolfhound named "Heart". 

Anyway, Binah's mum's heart was put to rest that Binah was alive and happy and well and busy on the other side. 

She asked one more question, "Did Binah have anything to say to her?"

Yes. Binah showed me a pastry on a plate, and her mum, Lynn, eating it. 

I described this to Lynne. She didn't get the significance. 

So, I said to Binah, "What does this mean?"

Binah said, "With your next dog, don't be stingy with the treats!"

Lynne laughed.  She said, "Tell Binah we had to keep her trim!" 

Binah laughed too. 

Binah knew what would lighten her Mum's grief. Understanding is a verb. 

Reading of the Week: Meet Jack

 

This is a sweet fellow. I got a black and white picture so I wasn't sure if he was a black dog or a brown dog. I asked him, 

"Are you a black dog or a brown dog?"

He said, "I am not the brown dog. I am the black dog."

I didn't find out what he meant until I showed up at his mom's house, and met Jack's sis, Bella, a beautiful chocolate lab.

Jack loves to sleep. His folks were a little concerned. 

We had the following conversation:

Bridget: Why do you sleep so much? Are you bored? 

Jack: I’m not bored here, but I like to sleep. I like to sleep a lot. I have lots of vital dreams.

Bridge: Vital?

Jack: Alive dreams.

Bridget: What are you doing in these dreams?

Jack: I am running with a pack. Sometimes I am a wolf. Sometimes I am a human.

Jack shows me buffalo.

Bridget: Are you a buffalo?

Jack: No, sometimes I am on a horse with buffalo.

Bridget: But always running.

Jack: Always running. I love to be with others as we run. I can feel them. I can feel who they are.

Bridget: What if you run here? Is it like that when you’re awake?

Jack: I feel that if I run with people here, there’s always things to look out for, but there, we are just running together.

Bridget: That’s fascinating!

Jack: Thank you! 

Reading of the Week: Scruffy

This is Scruffy. 

Scruffy is kind and sweet. Scruffy is awesome.  Scruffy barks a lot. 

That's Trixie, there, in the background. 

Scruffy is a cairn terrier/ poodle mix.  You get this kind of dog when you want a challenge.

Cairn Terriers have iron wills. They like to get their way. They drive to closure.

And Poodles? Poodles are smart. 

So Scruffy's owners, Bridgette and Chona, did everything right with this dog. They trained and socialized her. They spend quality time with Scruffy.

But, Scruffy, you know, she barks a lot. So Bridgette and Chona asked me to help.

I have never heard a dog talk as fast as Scruffy. Nor have I ever seen a dog narrate her story with pictures so well.  It was like The Wonder Years.

Here's a snippet:

Bridget: Let's talk about barking at people outside. 

Scruffy: Oh my god, it's so fun! 

Bridget: it's fun? 

Scruffy: It's great. They see me. They think I'm awesome. Some walk by just to see me!

Bridget:  So, are you telling them to go away? 

Scruffy: I'm telling them, "This is my house and I am awesome!" 

Bridgette and Chona confirmed that their neighbors do, indeed, walk by to see Scruffy's little face in the window!

Dogs that are raised with love and confidence building activities are so quick to say, "I am Awesome." They know that they are a wonderful creature and they act accordingly.

What a gift we give our dogs when we do this for them. 

We're getting the barking under control at Chona and Bridgette's house, without limiting the extent of Scruffy's awesomeness. 

Bonus Reading of the Week: Phil and Aroone talk Asses

Aroone

Phil and Elyse

Horse humor is like the humor of 6th grade boys. 

I asked Aroone why he thought Phil was so funny. 

He told me this story. 

One day, Phil saw a lady walk by their field. 

He turned to Aroone and said, "Look at her ass." She was apparently a wee bit plump. 

Aroone said, "What ass? She's doesn't have an ass with her." 

Phil said, "Not her Ass! Her ass. Her butt!" 

This cracked Aroone up. He laughed at this, at the idea that a gluteus maximus could be called an Ass. 

From that point forward, whenever either of them said the word "Ass", the other one would crack up at the inside joke. They could spend a whole afternoon with this. 

When I told their owner, Elyse about this, she said she was now going to spend an additional 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer each morning, to make sure he horses weren't snickering about her. 

Reading of the Week: Coney's Reincarnation

Millie contacted me to see if her passed away cat had reincarnated into her new kitten.

I get asked this a lot, and most of the time, the answer is No. My experience has been that only about 10% of the time does a pet come back into the same lifetime as his owner. 

With Millie, I especially expected a No. It takes time for a pet to reincarnate. Millie's cat, Coney had passed away not long before she had adopted Achilles.

When I tuned in, I realized that the Coney I was talking to was in physical form. He didn't feel ethereal. He was here. That was a great sign. 

I asked, "Coney, are you Achilles?" 

"Yes." 

I was surprised! 

I asked, "How did you get here so fast?"

He said, "I would leave my body during my sleep and go home and prepare for my next life." 

I asked, "How long have you been here?"

He said, "About a month. There was a placeholder here before."  A placeholder is exactly what it sounds like, a soul that saves your place. 

So, here's the part that's hard to explain and harder still to deal with. A soul in a new body may act slightly different than the previous pet. The body is genetically predisposed to different hormone levels, different stress responses. The soul comes through in the personality, but the pet is different.  

I talked with Achilles. He had no memory of his life as Coney. He is just a little kitty with a new home. 

It was strange to talk with Coney at the soul level and Achilles at the body level. I imagine in a month or two, they will be fully merged, and one and the same. 

Animals on the other side don't always get to choose whether and where they are coming back. It has to be inline with their life's purpose and with their owner's life purpose. 

Coney, in a new body, has a new purpose in Millie's life. He said, "I'm here to teach about the beauty of power without apology."  Women, especially have a tendency to apologize or accommodate around their power. 

We say, "Oh, it's nothing." or "You're good at this, too."  It sounds like Millie has some serious power to wield! 

Coney had a beautiful striped coat. Millie was surprised to notice that in certain light, Achilles has a black on black tabby pattern in his fur as well.  It will be interesting to see what parts of Coney shine through. 

Reading of the Week: Finding Beaujolais

12 days ago, I received a frantic phone call from Lorance Pasco. Her new dog, Beaujolais, had run off while she was visiting a client. 

Beaujolais is a young dog. He was rescued from a hoarder in Oregon. He is afraid of people and most other dogs. He had lived with Lorance for two weeks before he embarked on this adventure. 

Lorance had done everything right. She'd made up a thousand flyers, and had plastered them all around the Capital Hill neighborhood in Seattle. She'd contacted everyone she knew. She put up an ad on craigslist. She called animal control and checked the shelters.  Beaujolais had been microchipped and she knew that the microchip company had her information. 

He'd been gone about a week when Lorance called me. There had been sightings, but Lorance kept missing him. She was starting to think that she'd never catch him. She was worried about his condition. 

I tuned into him. He was in a park. He was scared that somebody would catch him and take him back to his first home. I said "Don't worry. Nobody is going to take you back. You need to go up to people so that you can get back to your new home."

He was quiet when I said this. I said, "You remember Lorence?" I sent him a picture of Lorence. 

I felt him warm up a little. "Yes. I like her."

I said, "Well, she's still looking for you. She's going to find you. She needs you to go up to people so that they can help you get back to her." 

Beaujolais liked that. He was slightly surprised that she was still searching for him. He said he'd try to go up to people. 

I twittered about Beaujolais, and throughout the next week, I checked in with him every day. Sometimes he was hiding behind some garbage cans. Sometimes he was in the park. They tracked him up to the Seattle Arboretum. 

He told me that he was finding food and water. He tried to go up to people, but then it occurred to him that they might keep him, so he reverted back to hiding in the park. 

One day, he told me that he had been finding food behind a restaurant, then running by the orange building and back to the park. 

Throughout, Lorance and I talked, and she went from hope to despair to just plain exhausted. She continued her search for Beaujolais. 

Then, on Tuesday, she got a call. Somebody had spotted him. She ran down to the park where he had been spotted. 

Lorance saw Beaujolais up on a hill. He saw her. They both froze. 

She said, "Beaujolais!" 

He leaped into the air and ran down the hill and jumped all over her, crying and whining and licking. Then he went home and rolled all over her bed. 

She has since fitted him with a GPS collar! 

Remembering Clem

My students must make several leaps to successfully talk with animals. They must suspend their fear and disbelief long enough to sign up and pay for the workshop.  They must try to connect and talk to animals with relative strangers over the phone. They must try again when they are wrong. 

What drives them is the same: the thrill and joy when they connect with their pets. The deepening of the relationship that happens when their pets understand them and vice versa. 

I love the feeling when they get an answer right. I love that little intake of breath that I hear over the phone. 

And I love stories like Clem's...

Clem was Peggie's beloved, ancient 8-lb. poodle. He was mostly blind, nearly deaf, but he still knew when dinnertime was. Peggie had adopted him as an older dog and he was a dear, dear friend. 

I met Peggie when she asked me to talk with Clem, to see if it was his time to go. He was emphatically not ready to go. He loved his life with Peggie, her husband and the rest of the pets in their household. 

Peggie took my class, and one day, I received this email:

I think I had a conversation with Clem.  At the time it seemed very real, but now 2 days later I'm having my doubts.  It was very emotional, the emotion just welled up in my chest and throat, and he did have a couple of odd phrases, so it was either real or I have a very vivid imagination.  I also didn't do any of that grounding or connecting stuff, so this is another reason I have doubts.
 
So anyway, on Sunday hubby and I were on a day trip to Charleston and we were driving along and the sunroof was open and it was a bright sunny morning.  Music was on the radio and I was just very relaxed and so I asked Clem in my head if I could speak with him and I hear a voice say "well, of course" and we spoke for maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
 
Bridget, it was like speaking with a very wise and spiritual soul.  He is here, he said, to help me with the lessons of patience and humility.  At one point he said (I wrote this down) "It's ok to just be".
 
He talked some about his life with the other woman and her other pets.  He said (wrote this down, too)  "I was the boss of them.............I got old and sick and they were the boss of me".
 
I told him I would have liked to have known him as a puppy and as a young dog and he told me that in this life he came to me twice as a puppy and those 2 lives were short, so this time he came to me already old.  He said when I was a little girl I once shared a lollipop with him and he's never forgotten.
 
Since this life of his is almost over I asked him if he would come back to me.  Clem said this has been a very long life for him and he will want a long rest on the spirit side, but if he doesn't come back to me in this life don't worry because his spirit is connected to mine forever.

Even with all of this wonderful information, Peggie wondered if she had really heard him. The details here are so clear. I assured Peggie that she heard him loud and clear! I asked if she remembered the lollypop. She said that she vaguely remembered a large dog that roamed the town, and that she shared a lolly with him. 

A few days ago, I received another email from Peggie:

Just wanted to let you know Clem passed on yesterday.  We miss him terribly as he was a very big presence in a little tiny body.  The household seems quiet and empty without him, but we know he's in a better place, whole and happy and bossy.
 
One odd thing.........Clem kept himself and me to a strict schedule.  At 9pm every night if I wasn't making the motions to go to bed, he'd stand up and bark at me like, "don't you see what time it is?".  Last night Jim and I were sitting on the sofa, just kind of in a daze, when all of a sudden Quest, the big boxer, stood up, looked at us, barked twice and walked down the hall to go to bed.  We looked at the clock and, yep, it was 9pm!  Clem left Quest a job to do.
 
I want to thank you again for the class and my one opportunity to really communicate with Clem.  I know why he was here with me and, though the loss hurts now, deep down I know his spirit will always be connected with mine...........because he told me so.

When I say that we all can talk with animals, I mean, we all can talk with animals. And we are so blessed when we can hear them! 

 

Reading of the Week: A Rare Conversation with a Rarer Turtle

This gorgeous creature is the last-known Female Yangtze Soft Shell Turtle.

She's eighty years old. I hope I look that good at eighty.

She lives in a zoo in China, where officials have pinned their hopes on her successful mating with her 100 year old gentleman friend. 

Turtles do talk very slowly. Still Waters Run Deep.  

Last week, I asked her how she was. She showed me  that her front left hand hurt.

I asked about mating and she told me that she'd really like it if everybody would back off and not put so much pressure on her. "People need to relax," she said. 

Then, I asked her the question I really wanted to know. How did it feel to be the last female of her species? 

 She said, "That's ridiculous. I'm not the last female of my species. I know there are more out there."  She showed me a secluded spot and three or four beautiful soft shells sunning themselves, and swimming in the water. 

I said, "You're sure they're out there somewhere?"

She said, "Yes, and I'm not saying where. They're hidden."  

It feels good to know that there are hidden places, untouched by humanity, where turtles can swim in peace.

Hec on the Other Side

Hecate-  1993-2009

I've talked with Hec before. She's the cat that really liked Murphy's Oil Soap.

Hec passed away a couple of weeks ago. She was not an easy cat to live with. Her owners loved her dearly, but put up with a lot of irritating behaviors from this cranky old lady cat.

They asked me to thank her for being in their lives. They also wanted to make sure she was doing okay on the other side.

I have NEVER met a spirit that was as light and full of joy as Hec's spirit in heaven. She was so happy to be free of her life on earth, to be free of the old damaged body, and her emotionally damaged mind.

She said, "I completely forgot about these spheres we have up here."

"What are they like?" I asked.

She explained that they looked like a soap bubble, but zapped you with a tickling energy if you touched them. They also giggle.

She showed me how she stalked and attacked them and how they giggled and bounced away.

I was hoping for closure, and to find a cat at peace on the other side. I wasn't expecting to find a cat so happy to be home.

I work with clients who are struggling with putting their pets to sleep. Although there are many pets that aren't ready to go, and we must respect the timeline, this final act of a good end is really sending the pet home. They're going home, where they are happy.

Reading of the Week: Munch

Munch lives in Portland, Oregon. Munch is tiny. Teeny tiny. He weighs about 10 lbs soaking wet. But he’s formidable whenever he sees another dog.

Munch and I talked about a lot of things the other day, but one of the most important things was about his name. 

He says he likes his name okay, but it kind of makes it seem like a bigger dog could eat him. 

I asked Munch- “What would you like to be called?”

He said, “Sergent Bilko”. 

I wrote that down, thought it was a little strange, vaguely remembered a Steve Martin movie by that name. 

We went on to the next question which was, “How come you lose your mind whenever you encounter another dog?”

To which he answered, “Dogs don’t automatically respect me like they used to, when I was a bigger dog. I need to show them that I’m in charge.” 

He showed me himself as a German Shepherd. I asked, “Can you tell me a little more?” He showed me a scene of a group of men in beige military dress. It was summertime, and they were sitting around a canteen watching a big black and white TV. There was a German Shepherd, named Sarge, sitting by one of the soldiers.

The soldiers laughed at the TV and then one shouted out, “Hey! Sarge! We should call you Sergeant Bilko!”  The German Shepherd smiled and wagged his tail. 

Thanks to wikipedia.org - I found out that Sergeant Bilko was the fast-talking star of the Phil Silvers Show in the late 1950’s. So, I think this was about that time, though it could have been a rerun. 

I asked Munch, “Why did you choose a small body this time?” 

He said, “I wanted to be small enough to cuddle.” 

Munch has plenty of cuddles ahead for him, and his mom is going to help him learn how to relate to dogs so that they do respect him.