I recently saw a quote from someone that said that empaths always connect with animals, and animals always heal empaths.
While I respect everyone’s ability to connect with animals through whatever means works for them, I believe this statement does a massive disservice to the animals in our lives. It puts unfair responsibility on an animal’s shoulders for “fixing” people who identify as empathic.

We know our “shit soup” affects our animal friends. How do we change our energy, or help our pets to understand what’s happening when they don’t speak our native language?

Just talk to them about it!

Talking to your pet is one of the biggest ways to mitigate the stress for your pet. Keeping them in the loop on changes, plans, struggles, worries, fears, and everything else going on in your life will help them feel like a valued member of the family. If you’re not comfortable speaking out loud, then journal it, dedicate it to your pet(s), and they’ll get the message. Just as long as you are speaking or writing from the heart, they’ll understand. Getting into the habit of doing this as a practice daily, or a few times a week, allows the energy to keep moving in the household so that it doesn’t get stuck or stagnant. It is only a problem when it gets stuck.

As a recap from last week’s blog post, we discussed the fact that everything is energy, including ourselves, too. And because everything is energy, everything is energetically connected, including us and our pets. This explains why the dog chews our shoes at the very moment when everything else is already falling apart. Or the cat starts peeing outside the litter box.
Our animals have to sit in the 💩 "sh*t soup" right there with us. They don't get a choice when our life is falling apart - whatever we're going through they're stuck with too. Whether it's a challenging break up, a move, death of a loved one, financial stress, deadlines, or a health crisis, they're right there next to us.

When we distill down any part of anything what you are left with is pure energy. Energy is the building block of the universe. We are all, essentially, made of the same stuff. It’s just the intricate patterns that energy gets combined into that create a tree versus a cat.
When we operate from this understanding we are intimately aware that this means that everything is connected. If everything is energy, then everything is connected energetically. This knowledge gives us so much more power than we realize that we have.

“You shoulda kept riding,” he said, looking down at me.

“What do you mean by that?” I shot back, as I tried to crawl up the still-collapsing bank. “I was riding! It ain’t my fault she decided to buck met off!”

“She didn’t buck you off.” His voice had a hint of bluntness to it. “You fell off ‘cuz you quit riding.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, obviously upset. “I was riding.”

“No,” he corrected me, “You weren’t riding. You were sitting. You quit riding over an hour ago.”

Horsemanship Through Life, Mark Rashid

Specter and Mercury were found in a friend’s barn and were very sick. They spent the first six months of their lives quarantined in the bathroom. They’ve come a long way since then!
Trauma isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when we think about rescue. We think about happy endings, and giving a pet a loving home, where they always know the next meal is coming. But we forget that their life prior to arriving at our homes may have been fraught with stress, and that the actual rescue process itself might not be all roses as we like to think.

We fall so deeply in love with the bundle of fluff that arrives to us, tiny, wobbly, and generally mewing or whining often. That baby love gets us through the toddler stage when everything is a toy and/or should be eaten. Somehow their antics keep us smiling and laughing through the frustration of the whirl wind of destruction and mayhem that is often left in their wake.

Now that you've gained more awareness of the formerly hidden places of fear, it's time to start playing with them and exploring what is possible.
When they're unconscious then it is impossible to release the tension or underlying fear for good. It will always creep back in, sometimes immediately, which can be frustrating (and adds a whole 'nother layer of tension!). So what do we do instead?

Fear is not a topic we like to discuss, nor something we like to admit that we experience. But if we get really honest, I think we can all admit that it plays a bigger part in our lives than we'd like.
Fear shows up in so many ways: that low level anxiety and worry about the bills, our performance at our job, our relationship, are we raising our kids right, the list goes on and on. Often these fears are related to old stories that we have that we don't even consciously make the connection.

Summer is upon us and the season of vacations is here! Ahh, fresh beach breezes! Cool mountain air! All the adventures await!

But wait! What about your furbaby? Are they coming, too?

As much as I'd love to travel with my pets, sometimes it's not practical. I don't know about you, but I think my cats would appreciate being stuck in the car for 8 hours even less than I do.

Here's a list of tips and ideas to think about when you know you're going to be traveling the routine is going to change.

I got this question recently, and thought that it might be helpful to expand upon the topic a little bit for everyone.

Holly M inquired: "Would it be irresponsible to let me cat outside? He cries at the windows and obviously wants to go out, especially when the sun is shining. What would you do?"

Thanks so much for the prompt, Holly! This is a complex question, and there is no single right answer that will fit for everyone. What I can give is the thought process and some questions to ask to find out what the best solution is for your situation!

I've been seeing butterflies EVERYWHERE! They keep crossing my path as I'm driving! Flying right in front of my car, zooming right over the hood. I keep apologizing as I blitz by them, hoping that I haven't disturbed their already erratic flight.