In my last post, I discussed the broken human-animal bond that often results in pets losing their homes and losing their lives simply because their people did not bond to them and felt that a change in lifestyle meant to toss away the pet. In this post, I want to celebrate those people who have a heart-felt and unconditional bond to their pets and other animals.

Have you ever notice that some people are more emotional when it comes to animals than they ever would be with people? Most days that is me. I can handle working on a terrible case of child or human abuse, but when it comes to the animal abuse case I have a difficult time keeping my rational brain intact so that I can help someone with the case. Maybe it’s because we feel that people (even children) could do something to help themselves (though that’s not true with children), or we feel that animals provide unconditional love whereas people provide conditional love (a conditioning of our pesky ego).

Earlier this month, I was attending the Hay House I Can Do It Conference in DC. This was an amazingly uplifting and spiritual conference. If you have any inkling towards spiritual work, this conference is a must see! It was important for me to attend because of the side business that I have with energy healing (which has a large component for animals and abused pets). During one of the sesions, Alex Woodard, a singer/song writer, was discussing a book he had written that also comes with a CD of songs. It’s called “For The Sender.” The concept of the book and songs relate to the letters that we write to those others … words we never said … words that are more for the sender than for the receiver. Alex highlighted one woman who writes a letter every Fall to her love who has passed away. Alex played videos in the background of these people’s stories as well as sang the songs.

So why am I talking about this? It’s because the very last story that he told was of the letter he wrote to his dog Kona, a black lab, who had passed away in his arms recently. Kona was his family, traveled with him as he struggled to launch his music career, was his confidante and his best friend. When he showed the video of Kona, especially on his last day on Earth, and then read the letter with obvious tears in his eyes and choking back sobs, the audience equally and openly sobbed.

I share this because, while the stories about the people were moving, it was the story about Kona that literally moved the entire audience of 1000+ people to tears. I bet you can relate to that, right? When you hear about animals who have been harmed or killed, animals who were given a last minute reprieve and were adopted to a loving home, animals who found their way back to their family after a cross-country trip, animals who passed away in the loving arms of their person …. those make even the strong ones well-up with tears. We get emotional about animals … whether it’s good or bad stories. Stories about animals touch our hearts and our soul at a deep level. I’ve always known this and have said that people are more bonded to their pets than they are to people. While that statement is sad, it’s true. And I actually saw it, en masse, with over 1000 people in the audience sniffling back the tears, holding their head in their hands to force back the tears, and others just openly sobbing. And what ran through my mind as I watched this unfold was … GOOD FOR YOU!

Feel those emotions! Love those animals! And let’s keep our hearts open to animals! Because when we open our hearts to animals, we will help them. And when we help animals, it actually makes us more compassionate as a human. And when we are a more compassionate human, we are more kind to our fellow human. And when we are more kind to our fellow human, the violence, wars and degradation of society will cease. You see … animals bring out the best in us and make us better people. (And some people actually believe “we” are the smarter species …. scheesh, doubt it!)

So here’s three cheers to all of the animals who steal our hearts everyday!!!

Psst: If you are interested in the spiritual aspect of life (especially how animals help us along the path), you really should check out the “other side” of my work at Manifested Harmony where I blog and post daily on Facebook.

All my best,