Tag dogs

Animal Wise: Fit for a queen

Nancy Crowe
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For a delightful tribute to Dash (and Tori, who plays him), visit the New Hampshire PBS site. (Photo courtesy New Hampshire PBS)

If you are a fan of the “Victoria” series and have not seen Season 2, Episodes 3 and 4, you may want to stop reading here. Even if you have seen it, it wouldn’t hurt to have a tissue handy.

How many twenty-somethings today could rule a nation? Before you answer that, let’s revise the question to: How many twenty-somethings of any era could rule a nation without the love, companionship, and guidance of a wise soul? I’m not talking about Prince Albert or Lord M, but Dash, Victoria’s Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, who was her constant companion from her isolated girlhood into the beginning of her life as a queen, wife, and mother.

Dash (played by Tori, who had the same role in the 2009 movie “The Young Victoria”) appears in many scenes with Victoria, usually in her lap, on her bed, or on a nearby chair. This is a dog who knows his place, and he observes everything that goes on and listens to all that is said (and unsaid) by his beloved human. There is nothing one would not do for the other — not for personal or political gain, but purely for love and perhaps the occasional treat. He was the one being in the world who did not care about her parentage or power. Dash cared simply and honestly for Victoria — not by doing, but by being.

Shouldn’t everyone with a country, corporation, or consciousness to run have that? Especially during the almost-adult to stuff-just-got-real-adult transition. Pepper, a miniature Schnauzer mix, saw me from eighth grade to my early journalism career and almost through graduate school. When I imagine those years without her, I see a lot more sadness and judgement and a lot less growth, acceptance, and fun. One little dog made a big difference for me and the people and animals around me to this day, and I’m no queen.

When it became apparent at the beginning of the episode that Dash may not be doing so well, I braced myself, but of course the tears flowed when he died. I love his epitaph:

His attachment was without selfishness,
His playfulness without malice,
His fidelity without deceit,
READER, if you would live beloved and die regretted, profit by the example of DASH.

A sweet, perceptive two-minute video about Dash can be seen on the New Hampshire PBS website.

The initially crusty, but increasingly insightful Duchess of Buccleuch becomes the conduit, in Episode 4, for a new puppy entering the queen’s orbit. An unauthorized leak in the royal bedchamber points to the need for a bit of training for the pup, but we are left assured that Victoria’s education will continue.

 

Is distant healing really a thing?

Nancy Crowe 1 Comment
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Photo credit: norsez {Thx for 13 million views!} via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

One of the coolest things about Reiki is that, being energy, it is not subject to time or space. Therefore, a Reiki practitioner can work with a client without the use of touch, or without even being in the same room. Or the same country. I can send Reiki to my brother in the Philippines from my Indiana home in the U.S. The energy goes where it needs to go, with no roaming charges.

Still, it’s one thing to believe that Reiki and other complementary healing modalities work hands-on — but the practitioner actually being able to do something for a person or animal miles away? How is that even possible? It’s a tough concept for this skeptical journalist, too, and I can’t explain how it works. I only know that it does.

A friend’s mother’s cat — I’ll call her Maisie — had been anxious, over-grooming to the point that her back legs were nearly bald. My friend mentioned her mom had just installed new flooring and wondered if that could be what was bothering Maisie. In any case, both she and her mom were worried. Wanting to help and knowing I could use the practice, I promised to send Maisie some healing energy.

That afternoon, when I sat down to meditate, I drew all of the Reiki symbols in the air, making sure to include the distant healing symbol. I asked God to let me be a conduit for whatever Maisie, and all humans and animals connected with her, needed. Then I took a few deep breaths and intuitively connected with Maisie, whom I had never met and who lived a couple of hours away. I introduced myself and asked her permission to send healing energy, explaining that she was free to decline or to take as much or as little of the energy as she wished. This is important: Whether distant or hands-on, it’s always up to the animal. If I’d sensed her turning or moving away or felt any apprehension on her part, we would have been done, with me perhaps asking if I could check in with her the next day.

Once I felt Maisie say yes, I pictured her inside a soft bubble of light, enveloped by healing energy from the earth below her and the sky above her. Animals ground with their feet, so it made sense that the new floor, with its unfamiliar feel and smells (along with strange humans in the house installing it), exacerbated whatever other anxiety she felt. I also sent healing energy to the house, envisioning a safe and happy place for all who live or visit there.

After twenty or thirty minutes, I sensed she’d had enough for the day. I thanked her, told her, “You’ve got this,” and closed the session with a brief prayer of thanks. I repeated this for three or four successive days.

It took another week or so before I remembered to ask my friend if her mom had said anything about how Maisie was doing.

“Oh, my gosh, she is doing so much better!” she said. The fur had started to grow back on Maisie’s legs … and she was playing and accepting human affection in a way she had not done in quite a while.

Did I heal Maisie? No. As a Reiki practitioner, I am the string between two cans … Maisie and a higher source, however she might conceive of such, being the two cans. Any healing that happened did so by God’s grace and Maisie’s willingness, in that peaceful space we created, to heal herself.

This is why Reiki works so well with animals, who so often are at the mercy of us humans: They are respected, and they get to choose.

To learn more or schedule a session for your animal friend, visit my Reiki page.

 

Dog school confidential

Nancy Crowe

51+12AmLdKL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_When 24-year-old Evie answers an online ad to become a dog trainer, she doesn’t know exactly why. She’s never had a pet and has little experience with dogs. But before she even clicks on the ad, “suddenly I felt that I stood in the doorway of a crowded, noisy room, picking up the sound of a whisper no one else seemed to hear.”

That is key to The Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances by Ellen Cooney (Mariner Books, 2014) — learning how to listen in a new way.

The training program is at a mountaintop sanctuary for stray and rescued dogs, and Evie is the lone trainee. There are no classes. There are no instructors. There are only stern innkeeper Mrs. Auberchon, Giant George (a young man with no apparent history or actual age), the older women who run the sanctuary, and a handful of dogs who — accompanied by mysteriously placed case history notes — introduce themselves to Evie, one by one.

Hank is a Lab/pit bull mix left anonymously at a shelter, deemed unadoptable due to aggression. Josie, a small white dog, lived in the lap of luxury until the new baby came along. Her hearing loss was determined to be the result of a recent blow, or several. Tasha is pure Rottweiler; before arriving at the Sanctuary, she was pushed out of a car at a stop sign, adopted twice and returned both times, and barely escaped being adopted by dogfighters.

The dogs, of course, aren’t the only ones with troubled pasts. Evie knows she requires just as much training and re-socializing as her canine charges. Mrs. Auberchon is a lone wolf and determined to remain so. What they have in common is an uncanny knack for communicating with the dogs. Evie “messages” them. Mrs. Auberchon reads to them.

Some aspects of the novel were puzzling. It’s hard to believe such an unstructured dog training program could exist for very long. The sanctuary staffers barely communicate with Evie and show little warmth or welcome. The canine characters, however, were very genuine, as dogs tend to be.

This story is a reminder that there are no bad dogs, as Barbara Woodhouse famously said in her 1982 book. There are dogs with severe limitations, and sadly, we humans are sometimes ill equipped to respond. My rescue dog, a German shepherd-golden retriever-collie mix, joined the household at about two years old, which in dog years is plenty of time to develop life-altering fears and bad habits. Like pulling at the leash and lunging at other dogs, sometimes injuring the human holding the leash who is trying to restrain her or, at the very least, hold on. Or launching herself toward moving bicycles because they frighten her so badly that attacking them seems to be her only option. After three training classes, there is improvement, but unfortunately not enough for walking her to be safe. However, she has a home, and who knows what learning opportunities may unfold?

Finding peace with doing what we can do for abandoned and abused animals, even when that seems woefully inadequate, is humbling. It reminds us to not give up on ourselves. After studying dog breeds and dog training and reading countless case histories, she writes a case note for herself in the form of a haiku:

Came in as a stray.
Is not completely hopeless.
Please allow to stay.