Two Hearts Looking for a Miracle

Our sanctuary is full.  This is not news.  We are always full.  But in one day this past week, just 1 hour apart, we got called about two cats from 2 separate and unique situations that needed help.  Neither had a chance in this world if we didn’t help, and time was running out very quickly for each of them. Both were desperate for the last opportunity for loving arms to hold them.  Both are elderly, somehow abandoned, strays found fighting to survive, both with health issues, and both incredibly loving.  We took them both in.

Moondrop

Moondrop was found as a stray in January and was taken to a local shelter at that time.  She is estimated to be at least 15 years old.  She was sick, in very poor condition, with severe flea infestation and hair loss due to flea allergies.  She also is badly in need of a dental.  Unfortunately, there are not many prospects for adoptions of elderly cats.  Yet, clearly, Moondrop was not ready to die and all she wanted most in her life was a person to snuggle up with.  So little to ask, and nearly impossible to find.  The shelter contacted us to see if we could give her a place and we agreed to help her.  Within moments of her arrival, she relaxed knowing she had a home again and people to snuggle with her.  When we pick her up, she nestles in with an amazing purr and will sit like that for hours.  We all fell in love with her instantly.  She has an appointment with our veterinarian for a complete exam and she will get the dental treatment she needs very soon.  As soon as we get her back to full health, we will try to find a special home where she can live out her days in a family all her own.  And if not, she will stay here with us at the farm, to be loved by us.

Lincoln

Lincoln arrived the same day after he was found scrounging for food at someone’s house.  He was ravenous when they offered him food.  This super friendly loving boy was also injured with abscessed sores on his neck and chest.  Clearly he had been out on his own for a while and was not faring well.  The elderly couple who found him had cats of their own they were caring for and couldn’t keep him.  When we saw that he was older, injured, and so compromised, we took him in.  Neither of these cats had any chance of getting adopted at the shelter.  We rushed Lincoln to our vets on an emergency basis and we discovered that he has a number of serious health concerns.  He is FIV positive.  And it appears he has advanced lymphoma.  It was clear to all of us how hard Lincoln fought to survive.  His wounds were cleaned and treated and they should heal nicely.  And we do not know how much longer Lincoln will have with us, but it was very clear he was not ready to go yet.  Life is still worth living for him.  Our vet feels he can still live comfortably for a while and we are giving him full care and treatment.  He is so incredibly happy, loving, and joyful and loves to snuggle.  Like Moondrop, he snuggles in our arms and purrs his heart out.  The relief flowing from this cat is amazing to experience.   To know that he can feel loved, warm, and snuggled in however much time he has left is the greatest comfort we can know.  His gratitude is obvious and when it’s time for him to go, we will help him if need be, and he will die surrounded by hearts who haven’t known him long but who love him for all he is.  That was the only thing he was looking for. So simple, yet he couldn’t find it.

When we held each of these cats the day they arrived, we were stunned by the feeling of how they let down their guard and stopped having to fight to survive.  They each knew that they were safe, that they had a place to be, and that they would know what feeling loved felt like once again.  They fought hard to get to this place again, searching for one more lap to curl in, one more set of arms to hold them, one more head to butt up against, one more heart to purr for, and their fights were over. 

No one knows how much time either of these cats will have left in their lives.  It may be weeks, it may be months, it may be years.  But for each of them, every single day counts as another day to be grateful that someone cared enough to open their hearts to them once again.  Neither of them deserved to die alone out on the street, sick and starving, but both of them were looking at that reality.  Someone loved them once, you can tell by the way they are and by how they see humans in their lives.  We don’t know what happened to them for them to end up homeless on the street.  But all it takes is a loving and caring heart to change their plight.  Knowing that they have now gotten their wish of loving arms to hold them before they die is both heart breaking and fulfilling to those of us who now step in as their caretakers and friends and offer them the space within our hearts to love and be loved once again. 

The Story of Tucker and Dogs with Aggression

When Letting Go is the Only Path to Healing
The Story of Tucker and Dogs with Aggression

I kept thinking, “This just can’t be happening.”  But it was happening and at an alarming speed as if I couldn’t make sense of anything.  My 20 month old Golden Retriever/Border Collie mix, Tucker, was standing in front of me with the softest eyes as the veterinarian showed us his radiographs on the monitor.  “There is a foreign body obstruction in his intestine.  Nothing but surgery can fix this,” he told us.  But I knew surgery wasn’t an option for Tucker.  Our options had run out.  He looked at me with those loving, soft eyes and spoke straight to my heart.  “It’s ok to let me go now.  I can’t do this anymore.”  The words came out of me as if I were watching someone else say them.  “We have to euthanize.”  The vet knew this was a possibility if what we found on the radiograph confirmed what he thought he felt on exam.  He quietly nodded and prepared the space for Tucker.  Ten minutes later, as we held him in our arms, he was gone. 

My heart felt like it was going to explode with grief.  I wanted to run outside and scream.  I knew Tucker was free at last from the past 18 months of hell he lived in.  I could feel his freedom and joy.  I knew it was the right thing to do.  But all I could feel was that I just killed my best friend.  A beautiful, vibrant, healthy young dog lay motionless before me on the floor and that was the only vision I could remember when I thought of him.  Yet, Tucker was so much more than that and deserved to be remembered for his love and light and life, rather than for his pain and torment.  It was a hell we walked through together.  I knew someday that I could share his story, our story, and help others who were going through the same thing.  You see, Tucker wasn’t euthanized because of the obstruction in his intestine, we could have fixed that with surgery.  But I had to make the decision to euthanize him due to aggression that was getting worse and worse as he grew older.  Nothing we could do, and we tried many things, could set him free from the hell he lived in within himself.  No amount of love could heal him.  No amount of money could cure him.  Nothing or no one had the answers.  And the only relief he could get was to move on out of the body that confined his beautiful soul to a prison from which he couldn’t get free. 

No one can understand the kind of pain that comes from making this decision with a vibrant young animal unless you’ve been there yourself.  If telling my story can help another, then it is worth the telling and worth the honor of my dear friend Tucker. 

Myth number one:  Aggressive dogs are mean dogs. 

It would be so much easier to understand actually if that were the case.  However, Tucker, like other dogs suffering with aggression, was a loving, sweet, soft, and gentle soul.  That’s what made this so unfair.  Because of his issues, I became closer to him than any other dog I’ve ever had in my life.  We could read each other so subtly that it was like a dance.  I knew when he needed help and I knew exactly what he needed.  And he knew I could hear him and that he could tell me when he was in trouble.  He was such a heart dog.  He loved people.  He loved other animals.  He loved life.  And he was so easy to love.  His sense of humor made me continually laugh.  Everything had potential to bring on a moment of play.  If he could make us laugh, you could see him light up with joy.  Yet by his final days, more than 90% of his life was spent living with the demons that chased him inside his brain.  It was harder for him to find his own light.  He was trapped in a body from which he couldn’t get out.

Myth number two:  Aggressive dogs are that way due to poor training and management.

Sometimes that may be true or contribute, but it is not always the case.  Tucker started out life just fine temperamentally.  Then suddenly, at 6 months old, something went very wrong.  It was like someone flipped a switch and we began seeing signs of aggression.  First it was directed toward the other dogs and generally around food.  So we separated him at feeding times and figured it was no big deal.  Until one day I heard him growling and turned to see what was going on, only to find that he was staring at me with his teeth fully barred and a look in his eyes that looked like he wasn’t even home.  When I called his name you could see him fight to come back.  I called him again and he began to snap out of it and act normal.  But I knew he wasn’t normal and something horrible was happening to my dog. 

Myth number three:  You can love them and train them out of it.

I believed that because I loved him as much as I did, certainly we could heal whatever was going on.  And certainly, it must be something I was doing wrong or misunderstanding about him.  This one took me many months to understand and accept that this wasn’t about me at all.  This was about something happening inside of him.  Something that he had no control over and neither did I.  I never felt more desperate in my life.  Please tell me this isn’t happening to me.  Because I understood how dangerous he was getting and I understood that although he hadn’t bitten us, it was because we worked with him every minute of every day to read his every cue and know when we had to intervene and put him in a room by himself BEFORE anything happened.  Because of this, I knew every subtle nuance of his body language, facial expressions, mood, and energy.  I kept saying, wow, if this were a healthy thing, we’d have an incredible connection.  And we did have an incredible connection.  We connected in a way I have never connected with any other dog.  But it was because I was constantly on call to know where and how he was and what was happening with him.  I only realized after he was gone how very exhausting and all-consuming that was for me.

Accompanying the aggression, Tucker also had an obsessive/compulsive component.  He would obsessively eat rocks, and not little ones.  The first time, at 8 months old, we thought it was a fluke.  We’d never even seen him play with rocks, let alone eat them.  But there we were having to do surgery for the removal of 6 good size stones in his stomach.  Needless to say, we began watching him closely when he was outside.  But 4 months later, it happened again.  This time it was 3 good sized rocks stuck in his stomach.  We rushed him into surgery again.  This time, he had a harder time recovering.  He had horrible drug reactions.  He was allergic to his antibiotic and then had what we believe were horrible hallucinations on his pain meds.  From this episode, he became very fly phobic.  To the extent that we started to not be able to get him to go outside during daylight hours.  Thanks goodness this was late fall and soon the flies were gone and the snow fell and covered any rocks.  We had a reprieve and hoped by spring that he’d be better.  In the meantime, we tried to find medical causes for his continuing aggression.  His episodes seemingly had a seizure like component to them.  He knew in advance when it was coming on and so did our other animals.  Our cats, who loved to snuggle with Tucker, would sometimes suddenly not enter a room when they saw him.  Each time this happened, an aggressive episode would shortly follow.  Watching our cats became a good barometer.   We tried drugs to no avail.  We took him for a thorough neurological exam and an MRI.  He was diagnosed with a probable seizure disorder in the emotional center of his brain and prognosis was very poor.  But we would try one last course of meds.  I had to wean him off the first med over a 2 week period, then wait 3 days, and start the new med.  It was the evening before we were to start the new seizure med that he began vomiting and we knew what we were facing.  We rushed him to the vet knowing that if he had another obstruction, then we had reached the end of our path together.

Nothing can prepare you for that moment.  But the realization that he didn’t have to suffer anymore gradually overtook our own loss and pain.  If Tucker had been a wild animal, he would have found a way out of that tormented life on his own.  But being kept safely in our house, the only way out was the decision we had to be brave enough to make with him.  We had to look past our own pain and allow him to find his freedom and his healing.  Sometimes healing doesn’t look the way we want it to.  Sometimes it doesn’t have the outcome that we consider to be the best option.  But in the end, we find out that we are not the ones in charge and we cannot always make things turn out the way we think they should.  For Tucker, he could not find wholeness here in the body he was in.  His path to wholeness was outside of this realm. 

It was not an easy journey.  It was a painful process to go through.  I write this now 10 months after his death.  It was a process for me to accept and understand that the pain would heal.  I can look at his photo now and laugh – remembering all the love and fun he brought into our lives.  I still shed tears – missing him and feeling sorry that we couldn’t have had longer together.  But the one thing I am most grateful for is the opportunity I had to love him.  That connection – the healthiest one of all – lives on in my heart.  And I know he is now free of torment.  And I know his journey continues forward – renewed, healthy, and alive with new possibilities.  For that, I will forever be grateful for every moment we shared together.  And if sharing his story helps someone else going through the same process, then the story is worth the telling, and is an honor to a dog with a huge heart who loved to help people.  A dog who shall forever live in our hearts - whole.

Ask Amber - November 2011

Here are this months questions for Amber Donkey.  Thank you for your submissions!


Q: My question is about reincarnation. I know in the past you have said that it depends upon what the soul wishes to learn as to what species it comes in as, but what I wanted to know is how particular you can be about coming back. I often look at domestic animals and think that I wished somebody had warned them to NOT come back as a pet cat or dog or cow – and wonder what they imagine their lives will be like if they “plan” to come in as a cow. It seems wrong to me that souls keep coming into bodies that are only destined for lives of misery and abuse. For a cat or dog, they may have a very good life with humans, or not. For animals that humans eat, they may have a short period of peace and happiness if they are cows grazed in paddocks, but the ending to their lives is always the same. For animals born into factory farmed species, it is hell. Do they know in advance, or are there too many variables to predict? I know that for humans, much supposedly depends upon good karma whether or not you have a good life. I am not sure if this is true, but if it is, is that the same for animals? 


Amber: This is such a juicy question and one that I am thrilled to get a chance to take a stab at answering. However, please understand that I am answering in a very abbreviated version. Let’s start with the last part of your question first. That dealing with karma. And my first statement is that karma means different things to different people. But the way you asked it is the way most people understand karma. Live good and you reap the benefits by coming back in a good life. Do something bad and pay the consequences by coming back with a lifetime of struggle. Or some people see it as do something bad to someone and the next life you come back as the victim of the same treatment. It is not that simple. So for the sake of our conversation here, this is how I understand it to be. The soul, every soul, chooses what it wants to learn more about itself, or not. If you come into a lifetime to learn something and you do not accomplish that goal, then you will most likely choose for another opportunity to learn it again. Its not a matter of punishment but a matter of finding another way, to learn the lesson again. So if you as a soul were choosing to learn more about compassion, for example, and you end up becoming an abusive person and hurting others, and then you die. It is not that you now will come back as a victim of abuse for what you did. However, you may, in spirit, realize that you never learned compassion for yourself or others in that lifetime and you may then choose the opportunity to live a life where you are given a chance to learn that again. And you may choose to live it from a different angle, like coming in as the one being abused to learn compassion for the abuser. Do you see what I mean?

Part of my point here is that we, the observers, of an animal or human’s life, cannot pass judgment as to why they chose to experience whatever they did, because you do not know what that soul is setting out to learn, understand in another way, or experience for itself. It is hard for us to watch someone suffering and to think that they chose that for themselves. Yet, I tell you that each of us has a journey and that journey is set by us alone. As I was in donkey form, I could say to you, why would anyone choose to come back as a human? I wish I could warn them not to. Its too complex and dense. But you see, every form of life offers a unique and incredibly beautiful opportunity for a soul to express its true beauty and to learn and feel and experience what it has chosen to learn.

Why would a soul choose to come back as a factory farm cow? I don’t know. Maybe they are just looking for a short physical time on this planet. Maybe they are hoping to change how things are. Maybe they weren’t aware of what they were choosing because they are still trying to experience all sorts of things to then choose what they want to focus on. But none of us watching will ever understand it, and none of us can judge it from where we stand. Because we don’t know what they know.

Living is not a simple matter. It is complex, multidimensional, multi-tiered, and is unique to each and every soul. There are no absolutes. There are infinite possibilities. As a living being in the physical, you only feel you have access to one of those dimensions. But in spirit, you have unlimited access to the whole picture. There is no easy answer to this question. You will never find comfort or complete understanding of another’s life or their life path. Your focus instead should be on yours. And your life should not be focused on whether you will be punished for what you do or don’t do. It is far more complex than that. And far more compassionate. I hope this helps with your question or at the very least, gives you another way to think about it.


Q: I would love to find out more about all these earth changes that you have been addressing in several of your posts over the last year. You talked about the sensitivity of certain animals and humans to the earth changes – especially when you were asked about earthquakes and how animals experienced this. I am wondering about those sensitive animals – including humans – that are quite sensitive to energy, and notice this. I find that these energy changes to the earth can be quite difficult to deal with – ie extreme tiredness, feeling out of sorts, etc. How do the sensitive animals deal with the after effects of these energy changes to mother earth?
 
Amber: Indeed, the many changes that are occurring on the planet energetically and physically, and emotionally are going to be tugging at everyone. The most sensitive will feel it first, just like any energy or change. But trust me when I say that there is nothing living on the planet that will not be affected by these changes. And I also have to say that not all change is bad. Its just change. And change is often not easy to deal with. You are feeling massive energy shifts as both you, the planet, and all of her inhabitants, go through a major shift. The easiest way to go with any change is to go with the flow and to not try to fight it. So by doing what you can to stay balanced and healthy, you then will fare better. When you feel tired and drained, then rest and recharge, instead of fighting through and trying to pretend it isn’t there. The earth is responding herself to the changes energetically affecting her. Weather patterns are an example of this as is climate change. As with all change, you can try to deny its existence and pretend its not there, but in the end, it will still affect you. Adapting to the changing energy is the smoother ride.

Ask Amber - September 2011

Q: My questions to you are regarding the earthquake felt along the east coast on August 23, 2011. I know non-human animals are very sensitive in being able to feel the earthquake coming ahead of time. Some humans felt the earth shaking during the earthquake and aftershock and other humans in the same location didn't. Does this mean the frequency of the earthquake was the same frequency of the humans who didn't feel it? Is there any meaning to the sensitivity of the humans who felt it versus the humans who didn't feel it? Did the non-human animals at Spring Farm feel the earthquake coming that day? Which animals were the most in tune with the earthquake coming? Were they able to communicate a warning to the humans there that day?


Amber: The answer to this question is not actually all that difficult. For any being, human or animal, there are various degrees of sensitivity or awareness. Sometimes its as simple as how much we are paying attention and to what degree we allow information to come into our senses. And other times it is based on just how aware we each are in the first place. All of us have the ability for acute awareness and connection to the environment around us. And that awareness includes earth shifts, energy patterns, weather patterns etc. It is all based on how we receive and process energy. In general, animals are more sensitive to energy because we do not allow ourselves to believe that we are not sensitive. Humans, by and large, have bought in to a mass belief that they are more cerebral and less sensitive to the subtle energy patterns around them. And you often are what you believe. Just as you can’t think your way through an emotion, you can’t think your way through feeling energy either. You feel it, you become aware of it, and you process that information. For animals, our survival in the world depends on our being able to process that information very quickly so that we can move accordingly. Because of that, we are more tuned in to subtle changes in energy. But that does not mean that humans aren’t. It just means that humans aren’t as aware of it.

Some animals felt the earthquake and some didn’t. Some felt it in advance of when humans felt it and some didn’t. Same holds true for humans. It depends on how much you were listening. And if you were listening, did you pay attention to what you heard/felt or did you ignore it? If an animal senses a sharp shift in energy, they generally will try to move away from that source of energy to a place that feels more quiet and peaceful. Out in the wild, that works. We move. Domestic animals cannot have that liberty, so many times we just seem agitated to you or out of sorts. Many humans also feel agitated and out of sorts during these events or for days or hours leading up to them. Some feel the energy and move out of an area, feeling strongly compelled to do so. Others feel it and do nothing. And still others don’t even feel it.

The simple answer is that it is a matter of awareness and awareness of your awareness. And then it’s a matter of action and what action you take with your action. It all comes from feeling and what feeling you feel free to feel. And that is the truth of it.

Note from Dawn: We are not aware of any of the animals here sensing the earthquake or giving us any sort of communication about the earthquake. None of us felt the earthquake here. This is not true however for Hurricane Irene. Many of the animals here sensed it was going to be a big storm and told us they felt it was going to impact our area greatly, which it did.