Luke is another of Meaghan’s fosters. What I came to know from my reading with him is that he is far from an ordinary dog. Luke was found as a stray in Texas. His history is not known but the scars on his body tell the story of a difficult life. What we do know is that Luke loves people but is prone to attack male dogs. While at another foster, he got along well with the female Aussie until one day, while they were playing, he just snapped and began going after her. He had to be dragged away.
Meaghan took him back even though she was already caring for 3 fosters and her own dog; but how could she say no? I’ve done several readings for Meaghan over the past year or so. She runs Strong Paws rescue and has asked for sessions to get help with fosters who have complex behaviors. She called wanting to find out more about Luke; he seemed so sad but had such an indomitable spirit. She wanted to know more about him and how she could help him get ready for adoption. A Strong Paws volunteer named Alex also joined our call. She wanted to hear first hand what Luke’s past may have been like.
When we started the session, and Meaghan called Luke into the reading, he showed himself right away but his affect was “Oh no, what now! Who are you?” When a dog presents less than enthusiastically, I back way off and give them space. I did this with Luke and all of a sudden I felt immense grief in his energy field. I setup a healing space so he could energetically curl up and let himself grieve. Meaghan, Alex and I held space for several minutes while he let out what had been bottled up inside him for a very long time.
I find that dogs who have been through tough times wait for a safe space in order to grieve all they’ve endured. Like many of us humans they keep it bottled up – sometimes for their entire lives. What I find so magical about dogs, however, is that no matter what they’ve gone through, they don’t hold grudges or need things to be different than they were – even if they were horrible. Mostly, dogs just want to grieve their losses and move on and, like most dogs, Luke had a powerful need to grieve.
As the reading progressed, Luke showed me a box along with a strong sense of fear. I responded quizzically and he showed me that it was used to deprive him of sensory input and movement. He would become agitated in the box and begin to feel agitated and scared. Then I felt a strong odor and my nose began to itch. Alex wondered out loud if he could have been part of a fighting ring. She had heard that they used inhalants that made dogs go crazy so they would fight. Mercifully, Luke seemed to have no memory at all of what happened during these times. He just found himself exhausted and hurt; injuries that he assumed he had caused in his out of control state.
I’ve worked with traumatized dogs before and asked him to show me his nervous system’s range – from calm to so aroused he lost control. That window was very small. I knew that if Luke had any chance of leading a normal life, he would need to open his nervous system’s “window of tolerance.” He showed me how he grew up. It was a chaotic scene that looked like a homeless camp. His owner – a man – would disappear and leave Luke to fend for himself. Others in the camp would give him scraps but they would also treat him rough.
I thanked him for sharing all of this with Meaghan and me and conveyed to him how sad we were that he had endured so much in his life. I asked him if we could do a healing on this past situation and he agreed but only if I would offer to heal the people in the camp as well. This is when I realized that I was working with a very special dog indeed. He knew that these people were hurting and that what they did to themselves, one another and to him was done when they were not in their right minds or in deep pain themselves. He not only wanted to heal himself of this craziness, he wanted them to feel the healing as well.
As a human, separating out my hurt from those that “caused” that hurt has been difficult. The pain I’ve felt at the hands of others hurtful actions seems inextricably linked with those people and those situations. I’ve done a great deal of trauma work to attempt to heal these past injustices but feeling Luke’s situation in my consciousness, gave me a first hand experience of how one could be deeply hurt by others and yet be left just with the hurt without the blame and anger toward another. It was so impactful that I actually awoke that night to feelings of intense anger, terror, anxiety and hurt and, although these were clearly memories of past traumatic events, I simply felt the feelings without ascribing them as being caused by anyone.