Sometimes, it is straight forward . . . I feel pain in my knee and the guardian might say "I noticed Rocco was limping a little bit on our walk yesterday." Or I may feel a sensation of being overwhelmed by noise and feeling afraid that the noise was over my head and the guardian can piece it together by saying something like "Oh, we were having work done on our roof last week, and that is when Misty started acting so strangely."
Sometimes, it isn't quite as straight forward and often it is because the animal doesn't know how to explain what is happening. They can't tell me "I have this type of medical condition and this is the name of it" so we have to work at interpreting what I am getting and do a bit of our own detective work. With one recent case, I was working with a rabbit who was losing his fur. My skin felt itchy when I was working on him but that was all he could give me. I sensed that he was allergic to something but he couldn't tell me what it was. His 'mom' and I did some brainstorming and she remembered that she had changed the type of hay in his hutch about the same time he had started losing his fur, so she decided to try cleaning out his hutch and going back to the old hay she had been using before. After a short while, we didn't see any improvement in his fur loss, in fact, it seemed to be a little worse, so we went back to the drawing board. We were looking for other things he could be allergic to and wondered if it was something he was eating. Each of the new things that had been introduced about the time he started having problems was removed from his diet and still there wasn't any improvement.
The next time I came to see him, my skin was itching even more. I told his 'mom' that I felt like things were crawling on my skin this time and it gave us an idea . . . maybe he had skin mites. We did some research and found pictures of rabbits who had similar fur loss, caused by something called "Walking dandruff." When treatment for "walking dandruff" was administered, he finally started to improve.
I know that he was giving me all the information he could. If he knew the word "mites" and what they were, I am sure he would have given it to me sooner. All he knew was that his skin was itching so that is what he was showing me. It was up to his guardian and I to interpret what he was showing me. Similar to Misty, the dog that was so frightened by the work being done on the roof. She told me what she knew . . . that there was noise over her head and that it was frightening her. It was up to her guardian and I to figure out what it was from there, since I don't think Misty knows a lot about roofing contractors.
And while the 'interpretation' part can take a while to sort out sometimes, the beautiful thing about animals is that they aren't upset with us for not figuring it out sooner. They know we always do the best that we can. After we finally figured out what was going on with my little bunny friend, I apologized to him for taking so long to get to the bottom of it. I told him I was sorry we couldn't figure it out sooner and wished he didn't have to suffer for all those additional weeks with itchy skin. What I picked up from him was that he knew we'd figure it out eventually and that he wasn't worried about it. He didn't hold anything against us for not figuring it out sooner.
I often talk to people who are beating themselves up for not being able to figure out what was wrong with their animal sooner but I know their animals don't blame them. Animals don't want us to be hard on ourselves. They do the best they can to communicate with us and then trust that we'll figure it out when the time is right.
Just this week, I spoke with a woman whose dog had a cancerous tumor in his neck. She knew something was wrong for many months, as he wasn't interested in eating and when he did eat, he would often throw up. She told me that she kept saying to him "Please help me understand what is wrong so I can make it better" and each time, her dog would come and sit right in front of her with his head tilted up. She thought he was just wanting to be petted and she would continue to say "I don't understand what you are telling me but if you can show me what's wrong, I will do everything I can to make it better." When the tumor was finally found, she realized that he had been doing just what she asked, in the best way that he knew how. She kept asking him what was wrong and he kept showing her his neck. He wasn't upset with her for not figuring it out sooner. Animals seem to be more peaceful about that part of communication, trusting that eventually the pieces will fall into place, never holding it against us.
So, if you have ever beaten yourself up over not figuring out what was going on with your animal, I hope you will be kinder to yourself. Animals understand that we do the best we can to interpret what they are showing us. And even if we get it wrong, or miss the clues they are giving us, they love us just as much.
When I 'talk' to animals, I don't hear full sentences. I feel sensations and from there, I partner with their guardian to piece together what I am picking up with what they have noticed as well. The guardians play a very important role in helping me understand what their animal is communicating to me, so it is paramount that I communicate well with the guardians too.
No comments:
Post a Comment