It's easy to rave about your animal companions when they are loving, easy to live with, happy, emotionally and physically balanced, perfectly healthy, and seem to be the perfect pet.
But what about those companions we bring home that create challenges? What if you bring home a new family member and he has emotional issues that cause him to chew on everything, pee on your favorite furniture, dig up your yard, attack your ankles or seem to hate you so much he wants to make your life miserable? What if the health of your little cutie pie took a dive and forced you to make decisions you really didn't want to make?
Here's a radical thought: Maybe you brought home the perfect animal that you needed in that moment. Even if you now feel you've made a horrible mistake, consider the possibility that you actually didn't - maybe your animal chose you because he knew he was the perfect catalyst for you to grow as a human being? Your higher self, your soul, already knew what you needed and you attracted the perfect soul challenge with your pet problems. Now it is up to you to open up to the bigger picture. Let your teacher teach!
As humans we can sometimes find growth painful, but growth is necessary. Our animals seem to know this and can teach us how to rise above our pain, or at least go with the flow of it. All we have to do is pay attention to the lessons they are trying to teach us. They understand what we truly need and find ways to move us along our path of evolution. They create problems that we need to solve. They mirror our issues and beliefs to show us what we refuse to see. They nudge us along one way or another to wake us up. In their own special ways our animal companions work hard to get us to grow, and sometimes it takes us time to step out of the painful picture, reflect and figure out what they did for us, especially if our relationship was a tumultuous one.
As I look back and consider what each of my animal companions did for me, I find that each teacher had a specific goal for me.
My first dog, Herbert, through his health and emotional problems, led me to the New Age path of holistic healing and personal energy growth, animal communication, and crystal energies, which led me to acknowledge my spiritual teachers, the heart and soul of mother Gaia and her gifts, and more. Now I am here, a Reiki practitioner and animal ambassador.
Through his stoic ways and dirty looks during my immature hissy fits, my second dog, Walter, showed me I needed to get over myself and let life happen. Because he got sick early in his life, he let me adopt my spiritual soul mate and writing catalyst, Junior, AKA Master Stinkpot. That is a story in itself, and I've even written a book about it.
Each bird I adopted came with his/her heart lessons. Bebe opened my heart to almost explode with love. Pierre taught me patience and trust. Charlie, who is still with me, is teaching me to accept that nothing is permanent, it's time to let go of my stuff, because she can chew up everything I try to hold on to and spit it out all over the floor, whether I like it or not. And let me tell you, for the last ten years I've been chasing her around the house trying hard to keep her from doing just that. My dog Jolene comforted me and showed me how to be a strong female. My present dog, Ginger, is taking on my deep seeded fears and is helping me recognize and transmute them. Her love and support means a great deal to me.
I happened to get an email newsletter from Val Heart today that echoes this soul challenge sentiment. Val is a world renowned animal psychic/healer that teaches animal communication and energy healing techniques for our animal companions. She talks about how she likes to work with the human as well as the animal companion to be a better healer for both.
Val says, "You may be amazed to
discover the phenomenon of the Human Animal BodyMind Connection and how
your pet mirrors you. Many aspects of animal behavior, health and
well-being is in fact a reflection of your purpose together.
Does your dog have a knee problem? Check your own body out. Do you have arthritis in your knee? Dig deeper - are you feeling a lack of support somewhere in your life?
Does your cat have asthma? Check your environment out. Is there an allergen affecting your own breathing? Dig deeper - are you expressing yourself enough? Are you harboring a fear of being heard in your lungs?
When your dog digs up the kitchen floor consider this: is he trying to get to China or find a buried treasure, or is he sending you the message that you need to dig deep, check out your health, and fix your diet?
During the last couple of years of his life, my Walter grew tumors all over his body, inside and out. I took that as a sign that I had a lot of low frequency issues and he was carrying them around for me, relieving me of the weight of my problems until I could find the strength to tackle them, one by one. I still feel some guilt about it, but Walter chose to do it, and I know adding the weight of guilt to my pile was the last thing he wanted to do. Walter died in the early 90's, but the image of him carrying around my stuff still spurs me on to clear my energy body, layer by layer, and the deeper I dig the clearer I get, raising my frequency a tad every time I recognize an issue and send it off to heal.
That's what our animals do for us.
In other words, they challenge us to grow into our true selves on purpose. To heal the pet we need to look to ourselves and see what our problems are - not try so hard to solve the problems our pets are having, but look harder at how we are contributing to the problems through our own issues. The more we don't get it, the harder they work to get us to.
So, here's your challenge, accept it or not: get past the anger, frustration, worry, and the urge to take your troublesome pet to the pound, and figure out what your lesson is. It could be something as simple as letting someone else help you, or thinking outside of the box, or changing one little thing that will improve both of your lives. Maybe you are being directed to a path that will change your life forever. Meet your challenge, whatever it is, and you both will evolve.
