Putting the Pieces Together

When I am working with an animal, I get information in many different ways--physical sensations in my body, pictures and images, words and phrases.  There is often some interpretation required to understand how everything I am picking up fits together.  When I am asked to help "solve a puzzle" the animal's guardian is often the key ingredient to making sense of what I pick up.

I recently had an experience that showed how all of these pieces work together.  I was asked to do a session with an older pit bull who was crying all day long.  For months, the only time he stopped crying was when he fell asleep and his guardian was very concerned.  She wanted to know if I could help them figure out what was making him so unhappy.

When I first put my hands on me, my stomach began to hurt.  It felt inflamed and irritated but I couldn't get a sense of why, so I asked this sweet boy if he could tell me why his tummy hurt so much.  He showed me the sensation I feel when an animal is struggling with allergies.  I explained this to his guardian but after reviewing what he eats and how long he's been eating his particular food and treats, we couldn't figure out what he could be allergic to.  My stomach still really hurt, which told me that we hadn't identified what was going on yet.  (Once I "name" or "identify" what is going on, the sensation will go away, so when the sensation lingers, it indicates to me that we haven't figured it out yet).

As I continued to give him Reiki in the hopes it would help soothe his tummy, his guardian and I moved on to the other questions she had about his health.  While we were covering those other topics, his guardian asked me if he mentioned his skin, as he has some pretty severe skin allergies.  I was telling her that his itchy skin didn't bother him at all in comparison to how bad his stomach hurt when all of the sudden I could see a major light bulb going off in her head.  She explained that she had been spraying something on his skin to stop him from itching but that he was constantly licking it off.  She asked if that could be the cause of his stomach pain and offered to grab the bottle of this spray.  I took one whiff of it and knew it was definitely the cause - not just because of the smell of it but because of the way my stomach hurt just talking about it.

His guardian and I sat there, putting the pieces together. She realized that his constant crying started about the same time she started putting this particular spray in his skin.  I realized that when I asked him why his tummy hurt and he gave me the "allergy sensation," I interpreted it as food allergies because it was something he was ingesting but he was trying to show me it was connected to his skin allergies.

She said she'd never use that spray again and we also talked about some things she could do to help soothe his stomach.  We were both so relieved to put all the pieces together and figure out what we could do to help her sweet boy feel better.  Animals do the best they can to communicate with us and as I was reminded last weekend, partnering with the guardian is the best way to ensure I am interpreting the messages correctly.