Dog Love is Love

The woman lay in her hospital bed, each breath a painful burden. Seven or eight members of her large family were in the room, their faces stricken. When I had left them two days ago, they had been upbeat, smiling.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

The son-in-law said, “They are deciding if they should let her go. The doctors have said there is nothing more they can do.”

I asked the woman’s daughter, the person who had arranged for me to come, if she still wanted me there; I offered to leave. But she insisted I sit by her mother, place my Reiki hands on her.

Two days earlier, the Reiki session had brought the woman peace. Her tense face had softened; she had briefly smiled. She had reached out and placed her tiny hand over mine. Because the room felt so heavy, I had started joking with the woman, and when I laughed, she had opened her eyes very wide, had looked into my eyes for many minutes. The daughter was delighted. She said her mother had not kept her eyes open for more than a minute since she had fallen into this near comatose state.

The doctors could not find anything wrong with the woman, who was a doctor herself, a surgeon at the hospital she was now a patient in. She had received her first chemo treatment for lymphoma some time before and, according to her daughter, was handling it well.

Then, suddenly, she had stopped eating; her muscles began to waste; she struggled to breathe, to speak. The doctors had run test after test.

On this day, my second visit, I placed my hands on her body. It was so frail, so hot. Today, she did not reach for my hand; her eyes did not meet mine.

As I began the Reiki session, a tall man in a protective gown said to the family, “Now is the time for telling stories.” They politely responded, but I could tell they weren’t really listening. He left, saying he was there if they needed him. I learned that he was one of the hospital chaplains.

I continued to quietly sit next to the woman’s bed, my hands gently resting on her body—her head, her neck, her chest, her abdomen. My role was to be a quiet, stable presence, both for the woman and for her family.

I wondered about the storytelling.

Remembering my parting words two days earlier, one of the woman’s sisters said, “We should be smiling.” But she wasn’t smiling. Her face was etched in grief.

After awhile, my hands still gently on her, I heard the woman say—not with spoken words, but clearly—“Let me go. I have a lot of work to do.” When I repeated this to her daughter, she loudly asked her mother if she wanted to leave. The mother opened her eyes and spoke, but her words were garbled, unclear.

A second daughter began to weep, quietly at first, but then more and more loudly. “I call you every morning,” she cried. “Every morning. Who will I call now? Who will I call? No one else understands my pain.”  Family members tried to comfort her, but her keening grew more and more intense, teetering on the edge of hysteria.

Sensing that this was upsetting her mother, I went over to the young woman and placed my hands on her: one on her upper chest, one on her back. Her cries became quieter, less intense. Within a minute, she was calm.

Now the family members began to form a circle around the bed, each leaning down to kiss the woman’s forehead. The second daughter, the one who had been crying, kissed her mother and then began to lament her mother’s passing.

There was such grief in the room. But I felt somehow removed from it, holding a place of balance and of peace. It was then that the woman’s husband asked me to leave. He said, “What can you do for her now? I am sure you have brought her some peace. Thank you.”

The first daughter, who did not want me to leave but who respected the wishes of her father, walked me out to lounge area and asked me to sit with her for awhile, which I did. I asked her if instead of crying, the family might share beautiful stories of her mother’s life, as the chaplain had suggested, if they might play music for her, sing to her.

Each of us has a limited time on this earth. Some of us will go quickly, of course, in an accident or quietly in our sleep. But imagine lying in a hospital bed in a small, cramped room with nothing of beauty in it but the faces of your family.

Would you want the room filled with the unsettling sounds of grief or with the peaceful sound of beloved stories, the reminders of your joyful time together on this earth? Would you want to be ushered out with tears or with song?

I hope you will be moved to share your thoughts.

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Tuesday morning, my canine companion, Elika, and I drove to the barn as we do every morning to feed our horses, Tara and her brother Fuersti.

Ordinarily, they are waiting for me in the arena in the morning. (They can walk freely in and out of it.) If they are outside instead, they see me drive onto the property, and they meet me inside.

But Tuesday morning, I didn’t see them when I drove up, and I didn’t see them in the arena. A quick scan of the back paddock didn’t reveal them either. And they weren’t in the shed out back.

I went back inside to get their breakfast ready and called to Fuersti. He answered with his deep call and poked his head into the arena, then left again.

Oh, no, I thought. What has his sister gotten herself into? By nature, Fuersti is the curious one, the mischief maker, but if Tara wasn’t coming in for breakfast, something was up. “Tara,” I yelled. My usually quiet mare called back.

I followed Fuersti outside and took a quick peek around the corner of the barn, into a very small area cordoned off with ropes to keep the two of them from walking over there and annoying the dogs that live in the adjoining back yard.

And there stood Tara, all 1200 pounds of her, over 16 hands high. The ropes were still securely in place, and hung low enough to keep the two of them out but not low enough to allow a foot to get caught in them.

“Tara,” I said in disbelief. “How the heck did you get in there?”  She had to have crouched down very low and practically crawled on her belly.

I had seen her do this some years before at another barn, when she’d run down a barn aisle, dropped almost to her knees, and shimmied under a three-foot space left by a lowered garage-like door at the front of the barn.

She must have pulled the same gymnastics with the ropes. Unfortunately, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand, she couldn’t reverse the procedure, and so she found herself trapped.

I went back inside the barn and came out the door leading to the area she was confined in, an area maybe 10 feet wide and 15 feet long, put a halter and lead on her and was preparing to turn her around when the dogs came out of the house and charged the fence. Tara’s head shot up and her body tensed.  “Tara,” I said. “If you spook and hurt me, I’m going to leave you out here.” She snorted, lowered her head, and walked quietly into the barn. I gave her her breakfast right there in the barn aisle because Fuersti had already eaten and I didn’t want to have to fuss at him to let her eat in peace.

Fuersti stood watching her, his head hung over the arena gate, his eyes soft, clearly relieved.

When Tara had finished her breakfast, I put her in the arena with her brother so that I could do my chores outside without their help.

Ordinarily, when the two of them have been separated, even if for just a few minutes, they go through their ritual of nickering and blowing in each other’s noses as if they haven’t seen each other in weeks and have huge amounts of information to share.

But on this beautiful summer morning, Fuersti greeted his sister with a quiet tenderness. He began to gently groom her neck and withers, his body language and soft energy saying, “You are safe now; you are well; I will watch out for you.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. I’d never seen them groom each other in the morning; they most often perform this ritual after dinner, and only for a few minutes. But on this morning, they continued to groom each other for a very long time, Tara seeming to melt into the presence of her brother in a way I could not remember seeing before. And the exquisite tenderness Fuersti used in touching his sister made the ritual feel holy.

You are safe now; you are well; I will watch out for you.

I hope you will be moved to share your thoughts.

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So often, people ask me for help when their animals are having serious movement problems and are in quite a bit of pain.  Of  course, I am more than happy to help, but I can’t help wishing I’d had the chance to work with the animals sooner, when the inefficient movement pattern was just beginning, before it had grown into a debilitating problem.

These humans aren’t intentionally ignoring movement issues, of course. They just don’t recognize them. Or if they notice a little hitch in a dog’s gait or stiffness in a horse’s neck, they may not realize the cause of the problem or the fact that it won’t necessarily resolve itself. 

So, what should you watch for? Here are a few suggestions.

Dogs

Does your dog tend to sit on one seat bone, instead of sitting evenly on both?

Does your elder dog have difficulty standing up? An animal should be able to move smoothly from one position to another.

Does your dog have a limp, even a minor one?

When you stand behind your dog, do you notice that one side of his ribcage is more prominent than the other?

Still behind your dog, does her head seem centered on her body, or is it off-center or tilted to one side?

Does your dog swing his hips freely when he walks, or do his hips seem stiff?

Horses

Does your horse swing her hips and barrel freely when she walks?

Does he step under well, or is his gait short?

Is her trot smooth or a bit choppy?

Can he move his neck freely and easily?

Is one side of her ribcage more prominent than the other?

Does he have more trouble traveling in one direction than the other?

If you start training your eye so that you catch movement issues early on, you will be able to prevent more serious movement issues later. I can help your animal, but you can help as well.

In my next few posts, I will be sharing some ideas of how to encourage your animal to move freely, with comfort and grace.

Have you noticed any of these movement issues in your animals? Have you noticed others that you have questions about?

I hope you will be moved to share your thoughts.

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Part of any Level I Reiki class is a discussion of the five Reiki precepts:

Just for today, I will not anger.

Just for today, I will not worry.

Just for today, I will be thankful for my many blessings.

Just for today, I will do my work honestly.

Just for today, I will be kind to my neighbor and to every living thing.

A few weeks after the tragedy in New York, I was teaching a Reiki I class. The students and I had completed our discussion of the first four precepts, sharing thoughts and stories about the ways in which anger and worry and dishonesty can poison your life and the lives of those around you.

Because this was a Reiki for Animal Lovers class, when we began our discussion of the last precept, students were eager to talk about their passion for the well-being and kind treatment of animals, both domestic and wild.

We then eased into a discussion about the challenge of treating difficult people with kindness, even those who have hurt us, those who have caused us great suffering. On an abstract level, everyone seemed to accept this precept. I reminded them that putting it into practice, however, might not always be easy.

When I suggested that the precept meant they would be able to show kindness to the bombers of the Twin Towers, to Bin Laden himself, one student physically recoiled. “That is taking it too far,” she said.

But it is not taking it too far. It is going exactly where the precept demands we go.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., said,

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Can you hold kindness and compassion in your heart for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—even though he has committed an atrocious crime against the people of Boston, of our country, of our world?

Can you begin by replacing anger with love; replacing worry with creativity; expressing gratitude; approaching your work with passion?

 I hope you will be moved to share your thoughts.

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[While the occasion for this post is horse-related, these comments relate to all of the animals in our care.]

Here in Northern Illinois, a barn has been quarantined because of an outbreak of the Equine Herpes Virus (EHV), which is highly contagious and can be fatal. Two of the horses have already been put down.

Whenever disease sweeps through these large, commercial barns, my heart breaks a little.

While there is no vaccine for the herpes virus, more than one large veterinary practice in the area has urged horse caregivers to be sure to stay current on all shots (and they recommend a boatload of them) in order to strengthen their horses’ immune systems. When I read this advice, my head nearly exploded.

How does vaccination for other diseases boost your immunity against a disease for which there is no vaccine? This makes no sense. Further, much has been written by holistic veterinarians and researchers to support the view that vaccination, especially over-vaccination, can actually damage the immune system.

So what can we do?

While we cannot protect our beloved equines from all harm, we need to be more mindful of their natures, what they require for both physical and emotional health.

We need to feed our horses clean, healthy feed with properly balanced nutrients; make sure their water is free from contaminants; carefully detox their systems with professional guidance; allow them to experience the seasons and the rhythms of day and night–to walk and run in the sunshine and the snow, in the light and in the dark; to share the company of other horses; and to reduce the stress-producing practice of confining them to stalls.

With equines as with humans, immune system health begins in the gut. And so, perhaps most importantly, we need to reduce and manage gut acidity, which contributes hugely to ill health. This acidity is caused by the nitrates, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, and countless other pollutants in our air, water, and soil; by overly processed and sugar-laden feeds; by feeding large, concentrated meals instead of small amounts throughout the day and night; and by the stress caused by confinement.

While these are just some of the ways we can boost the immune systems of our beloved equines, I think they all boil down to one core principle: We must allow our horses to be horses by honoring their natures and their needs, and we must assist them with overcoming the environmental degradation that humans have allowed the greedy few among us to perpetuate.

I hope you will be moved to share your thoughts.

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