A Path With Paws

Did you know that we often share the same diseases and health conditions with our animal companions?

I can not count the times that I have been in a treatment room with someone and declared that their cat or dog had say asthma to have them comment, “that’s odd I also am asthmatic.”

Many times it goes beyond just two creatures. I remember telling one woman that I thought her cat had inflammatory bowel disease.

“That’s so strange, “ she said, “because my husband is in the hospital with IBD and has been for the past week and the whole time he has been in there my stomach has been bothering me also.”

Many families may not share specific diseases but related ones. I have found that people with fibromyalgia and lupus tend to have animals with inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and muscle or tendon pain (especially in the back). In Chinese medicine IBD, asthma and back tendon pain are one condition called liver qi constant. This is a disease that gets worse with stress like fibromyalgia and lupus.

When I first see an animal, I often ask their person if they have sensitivities to certain drugs or herbs because it is often the case that if the person is sensitive to something that their animal will be also. People that have strong reactions to acupuncture will often have animals with strong reactions to acupuncture. When people cannot tolerate a certain drug it is often the same for their animal.

So what is going on here?

The first response I usually get is, “Oh no! Did I make my animal sick?”

I don’t think that is the case.

And let me just add that not all people and animals share illness. Just because you had a dog die of cancer doesn’t mean you will and just because you have diabetes doesn’t mean that your cat will become diabetic.

I have definitely given this some thought over the years and have a couple theories on this strange phenomenon. These are from my own experience and I would be interested to hear other people’s ideas.

I think that we tend to attract into our lives people and animals who are like us. Because of this we also attract in animals who share the qualities that make them more prone to specific illnesses.

“But I picked my animal out, “you may say.

Did you really?

How many times was there just something about that one who caught your eye?

“He was just reaching through the bars of his cage, I couldn’t leave him there.”

“There was this one puppy who just wouldn’t leave my side.”

I think they often do as much of the choosing as we do.

I also believe that some animals choose to come to this plane of existence to help us with our experience. What I mean is that they are like our guardian angels in animal form. They come to help us work with our own health and healing and to teach us about grace and love. When an animal shares a disease condition with us they are helping us work with our own illness. In seeing how they work with disease we are able to bear the burden of ours better.

I’ve gotten in arguments with people over this idea because I’ve had people think that I was implying that animals are our servants. I believe the opposite, that they are more enlightened creatures than us and have chosen to help us.

I want to add one more important thought. Sometimes there is an environmental reason why we share disease. By all means if everyone in the house has lung conditions please make sure there isn’t a mold or toxin problems. Everyone knows about using the parakeets in the coal mines. Don’t ignore warnings that there is something wrong with your home.

When we share disease often curing ourselves helps our animals and helping our animals helps ourselves. When I began to work with my own anxiety my dog Jake became less anxious. When I am not taking good care of myself my cat Rudy will stop eating. All I have to do is look at Rudy or Jake to see where my own health is.

Often times we need to work towards healing ourselves to help our animal companions. Healing is not a journey to undertake alone. How amazing that we have these teachers and guilds right in our own homes!

When I first started my career treating animals, I would greet them and say, “I want to take away your pain and suffering. I will pull it out of your body and then you will be free of it.” I remember towards the beginning of my career I met a dog, who was boarding at the clinic, who couldn’t walk and was very painful. It was a slow day and so I decided to do about an hour of energy work. After that hour to the amazement of the technician, who jumped up like she had seen a ghost and shouted,” Fred’s walking,” he stood up and walked out the door. However he only continued to walk for about two days and when I worked with him again he only ended up with about a day of relief. I remember being so frustrated that I had tried so hard only to have him get worse again. But I was just removing pain, not helping him to work with it himself. I don’t know, if I had know what I know now, if I would have been able to help him get better or not, but the approach I was using then did not work. The relief I gave him clearly did not last. In addition it took a large toll on my body to work this way and I would physically hurt and weaken myself to take the pain away. I would also have animals who would get upset and not let me work with them; anytime I would try they would pull away. Their pain was part of them and I was acting like that part of them was bad and that they were not whole. They wanted to learn how to live with their pain and work with it, not for me to magically remove it. I was also invading their personal space without their permission.

I have since realized that what animals want is compassion and acceptance. Isn’t this what we all want after all? They want help but also they want to be involved in the process of healing their illness. They have their own wisdom that needs to be respected and listened to. I have learned to approach animals I am working with and say,” I will sit with you and be here for you; together we will look out from the same place (and not me staring at you like there is something wrong). From this place of togetherness, we will explore how I can help you work with your illness/pain and see if there is a way that I can help you to heal yourself.” Not only have I found that this works best in the long run and I don’t hurt my own health but animals are much more open to working with me.

Like us all, animals have an amazing ability to heal themselves and to deny them the opportunity is stealing from them an amazing experience for growth. Through their own path of healing they grow stronger. Through this strength they are able to show us what it means to fully live with illness and heal from illness.

Christmas lilies are extremely beautiful but also deadly to cats. Every year cats die from nibbling on lilies and once they become sick it is too late. Just a couple bites of lily will destroy the kidneys of a cat and send them into renal failure. Usually they die within 24 to 72 hours. Please do not bring lilies into your home if you have cats even if you think they will not eat them. It is heartbreaking to have to tell a cat’s person that there is nothing you can do. If your cat does eat a lily call your veterinary clinic or emergency hospital immediately and get instructions to induce vomiting.

In my dream, she approached me with that sparkle she always had in her eyes. “Come to me and lay beside me and I will take away your fears,” she seemed to say. I lay down with my head against her soft golden fur and pressed deeply into her side feeling protected and safe. I could feel her love and warmth, hear her heart beating, feel how alive she was, yet I knew in the dream that she was ready to become a dog of the stars. I woke up knowing that Rooney had decided it was time to leave this world. Her beloved human companions called me soon after to tell me they thought it was time to let her go.

While I felt drowning in sorrow, I knew it was the end of a wonderful, miraculous life. Rooney had decided that she could not stay here any longer, this was her choice. Two and a half years earlier she had been diagnosed with bladder cancer and was given at most three months to live. Her human companions had done all they could for her, putting in a port to drain urine out of her body because she could no longer pee through the normal opening, starting her on chemotherapy, and waiting for the day soon that they would have to let her go. Rooney, however, had no intention to follow the prognosis she was given.

When I first met Rooney she had already been living with cancer for six months. As I approached the house, I saw two happy dogs peering out the window, two dog tails wagging. Syd was the first to greet me, jumping up and down and trying to inhale my arm - I must taste you! Rooney stood back and watched waiting patiently for her dog sister to find her mind again. A beautiful dog, she was part Chow, with long golden hair, a thick mane, and deep brown eyes which if you looked into showed her complex soul.

Rooney was unique in that she really wasn’t sick. Yes, after her monthly chemo she would feel a little off for a day or two but besides that she was really quite good. She wasn’t dying even though she had a fatal disease, in fact she would get quite upset if you talked about her dying or even about her being sick. I would come to give her acupuncture and we would start to talk about some little problem she was having and she would get up and leave - walk right out of the room and find somewhere else to be. She seemed to say, “Hey, I’m just fine please don’t dwell on my problems. I’m here, I’m me, and I’m not my illness. Love me for who I am today, at this moment. Will you please stop acting like there is something to be sad about here?”

When Rooney was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she became more free to live. We often said that Rooney had complete control over her cancer: not only did she live every day fully, enjoying her walks and the great love she received from her people, but everyone she touched lived more fully because of her. Every day with her became a gift and we took nothing for granted. When I made my weekly visit to treat Rooney, I never stopped being amazed at the grace of how she lived with her illness, and the joy that she gave to each moment. It was impossible to walk away from Rooney and not feel more present in my own existence.

Towards the end of her illness, Rooney reached a point where we knew she was dying. She once again lost the ability to urinate on her own, which she had regained shortly after staring her chemo, but to our amazement she started to be more like a puppy, regrowing her hair with a soft downy coat that she had only had when she was young and eating better than she had in a long time. I think Rooney finally accepted she was dying, knowing it before any of us did. It had been important to her to see the new twin children who were born to her people shortly before her death. They had arrived and she was free to go, she had lived over thirteen years, a good age for even a dog without cancer.

Even though Rooney was completely dependent on her people to drain her urine every 6 hours the last months of her illness, she was happy because she was among her family and at home. She was loved, well cared for but most importantly valued for her wisdom and what she gave to those who loved her. I think a large part of why Rooney was able to work with her illness with such grace and live so much longer than anyone expected was that her human companions did not see her care as a burden but as a gift given to a much-loved friend. In exchange she gave us all unconditional love and the gift of living each moment present and aware, feeling joy, feeling sorrow, seeing the movement of time as something to coast along on and not to fear.

The phone rang again and it was my best friend Cheryln calling to tell me that her labor had began. I remember eight months earlier finding out that Cheryln was pregnant and offering to be at the birth. For the past month I had been waiting with excitement for this call and now I wanted everything to wait. “Don’t worry the contractions are still far apart,” she told me, “no need to leave yet.” I was conflicted over my promise to her to be present at this birth and my need to be with Rooney at the end, neither could wait and Cheryln was a three hour drive from me. I silently hoped that I would be able to be present with them both and was also astonished that both would come on the same day.

Somehow it seemed more than coincidence that Rooney would pick the time to pass away to be the same day as the birth of a new life that I was also so involved with. She seemed to want to point out that death is not an end but just another step in the cycle of life we are all a part of. I think this was also why she waited for the twins to be born before choosing to depart.

Cheryln’s labor did wait, and I was able to be present with Rooney and her family when she passed away. Her death was very peaceful, and she passed away surrounded by her whole family of people and animals - those she loved most and who loved her most - by her side, in her home. While her passing was full of sorrow and left us with a hole in the space that she had filled for so long, there was something about being present when such a wise being leaves this existence, after living life so fully, that inspires us all to live our lives with more joy.

After returning home from Rooney’s passing, the phone rang again, and it was Cheryln asking me to began my drive down to Portland. I jumped in the car with our other friend, Jenn, who was also to help with the birth. I was overwhelmed with the sorrow I felt about Rooney and the joy and anticipation of a new life about to began. Lilliana’s birth was beautiful and amazing and she came into the world with a good set of lungs, at home surrounded by people who loved her family, the cat and three compassionate naturopaths who helped with the birth. I spend most of the labor holding Mr. Moo, their cat, so he could watch what was happening. He was very fascinated with the whole experience. Mixed with my sorrow there was great joy with the birth of this little perfect being. Ten fingers, ten toes and one very long and active tongue.

I will never forget how it felt to experience the sorrow of the passing of such a wise friend and teacher, who had lived her life how all of us wish we could, and the joy of the perfect birth of a baby who has just began in this world, all within a day. Through my work I have had many great animal teachers who do not speak with words but who guild us through the way they live, love, and accept. Rooney was one of these teachers and I hope that her wisdom on how to live can inspire us all.