bridging species — Page 5 — Intuitive and Spiritual Consulting, Past Life Regression

Love and Choice at the Crossroads

January 10, 2012 by Robyn Fritz

Every January people think about New Year’s resolutions. I never did get that, maybe because I think of life as a choice, and I’m glad I get them.

Or I used to be.

My work as an intuitive, as one being on the planet, is about choice. How can we grow as a society by recognizing that the world, and everything in it, is alive, conscious … and free to choose its path? Everything.

Humans are not guardians and caretakers. We are equals. Equals to everything from our chairs to our cars, our homes and businesses, the land and water around us.

Equals to the animals who are part of our multi-species families.

They get to choose. We get to live with their choice. With them.

Sure, it’s cut and dried in theory. In practice, it’s fascinating and exciting, because that’s when participation in the great dance of life helps us hear, for example, what a hurricane thinks about its work, or what little tweaks would please and invigorate our homes and businesses.

But choice can be painful, and we’re living that now in my family.

My beloved eldest dog, Murphy Brown Fritz, has, in her own words, chosen to ‘walk the mystery’ and to refuse surgery that would complicate but possibly save her life. For a short while, anyway. Maybe. Nobody really knows. I tried to find out, and I couldn’t.

At 13.5, she’s had a long and fascinating journey to wellness, one that I walked with her, that we all did as a family. This fabulous life I shared with this stunning dog has inspired my work as a writer and intuitive, my view of the world and the human-animal bond, my work with my crystal partner, Fallon, my sense of humor. Together, Murphy and I got well and went out into the world to do our work.

But we now know that Murphy’s journey is ending. She has a tumor on her spleen, and there are no easy choices. Remove her spleen and she may live, a few weeks or years, we don’t know. But if it’s a bruise or a tumor that is the spleen’s own way of dealing with a lifelong platelet disorder, maybe, just maybe, surgery is not the answer. And right now it isn’t, anyway, because this all started because she had a mild cough and UTI, and she has an infection to beat first.

That we even know about the tumor is because the intuitive in me kept insisting there was something more. Now there’s another part of me that asks why I insisted on finding out.

I thought science would give us an answer, a time frame to plan our year, an answer of some kind, a clear path: if you do this, then that happens.

But science doesn’t give answers like that.

Love does.

This surgery for Murphy would be complicated. And we had a deal. Through the ups and downs of our journey to wellness our deal was that we would fix what we could because the larger journey to wellness was healing our wounded souls. We got well together. That done, we agreed that I wouldn’t ask her to do any more, but she’d get whatever she wanted. No matter what.

And she got it. She’s been healthy and vigorous for most of her amazingly long life.

But science and thoughtful care take you only so far. Love and choice do the rest.

Stunned and griefstricken at this news last week, I had sense enough to give this choice back to Murphy. “What do you want to do?” I asked her.

“We had a deal,” she said. She thinks her time is close anyway, and she doesn’t want the complication of surgery. At least not now. We are exploring her options, to give her more information. But right now she thinks she will live longer without the surgery, and she could very well be right. She wants to “walk the mystery” as freely as she can. I’ll be there with her, as will Alki and Grace the Cat. Our medical team. And our intuitive team, which includes guides and dragons and Fallon and the entire Alchemy West Committee and the one intuitive in the world I trust when I need to step aside and ask for help: Debrae Firehawk.

Murphy’s defied the odds before: the little dog no one expected to make it to 3 is 13.5. In my less rational moments I want to grab her and run as fast as I can, to outrace whatever it is that’s taking her from us. In other moments I’m arranging supportive care. For all of us.

We’ll be chronicling our journey, wherever it leads us, and we invite you to share it at our magazine, Bridging the Paradigms.

For this month, we’re just pointing us all back to New Year resolutions. Forget them. Instead, ask yourself what you will do with your choices. What do you want your year to look like? What will you do if things change? How does love choose its way? How do you honor love’s choice?

This choice terrifies me. I guess the important ones should. Everything I believe about how we should live our lives comes down to honoring Murphy’s choice. Find out everything I can. Explain it to her as best as I can. And then let her choose her path.

When I could throw everything in the universe at a tumor that may be killing my beloved dog, would I take her choice away to suit mine?

Can I? Should I? What does love look like?

It looks like choice. Her choice. We’ll find out where that takes us.

Oh, and another thing. There’s a new “energy” system, something that showed up here about five years ago. I kept trying to give it away. It kept coming back. Fallon and I have been using it at times during our intuitive consultations, when it has shown up and clients have agreed to experience it.

When I say I am not a healer, I mean it. I am not a healer. Fallon is. But I can use this new “energy” in a new way, and I will. So I can say for now that I’m a healer, but that word has no real meaning in the new paradigm. A new word will come.

This “energy” is something very new in the world. Very right. A new paradigm for vibrational work. For healing. For choice.

Murphy chose that as her option. Fallon and I are on it. As are Alki and Grace the Cat. It does not promise a cure for Murphy, whatever that means. It just helps create space for choice, for Murphy, for the tumor, for us.

Can’t define the energy right now. All I know is that it’s about love and choice.

So this New Year I resolve to honor choice. Whatever that looks like, wherever it takes us.

What choices will you honor this year?

Walking the Birthday Walk with Dogs

December 30, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

When you live the human-animal bond, you celebrate birthdays with your multi-species family.

Even when the birthday in question is yours and you’re getting older (it happens yearly).

Okay, we were celebrating my birthday this time. But it’s in the dead of winter, after Christmas, before spring. In Seattle. Pretty much the weather sucks.

Does Grace the Cat care? Of course, she stays home.

Do the dogs care? Of course not. They’re Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, born to flirt and goof off. They have jackets and a lazy human who doesn’t like to be cold. They can routinely trump that.

So why not take the dogs for a walk in the sun on my birthday?

There are hazards. It’s Seattle. In winter. At the beach.

You expect wind at the beach. But on a sunny day you expect sun. You forget that in winter the sun only manages to get halfway up the sky, and then only stays there for 20 minutes (15 on the weekends, it’s apparently celestial labor law). And the sun, being a wienie, races through the winter days here as fast as possible, so it can hang out somewhere warm, like, well, somewhere else way far south of us.

Birthdays may warm you up, but the air, it’s colder than all get out. Why? Because we’re way far north in Seattle, almost to Canada, which is right at the North Pole. Especially in winter. Because when you’re at the beach in Seattle, you’re right in the path of that cold north wind, nothing stops it, and why is that? Because Canada ducks as it flies over, that’s why.

So, anyway, at the beach on my birthday. With the dogs. Walking the sun walk. The dogs are thrilled because the sun shining means they can see their prey better, which is all manner of completely uninteresting inedibles that smell as bad as they look and the dogs can’t sniff fast enough.

Really. Multi-species families are cute. And gross.

But it’s sunny. Except I forgot about that halfway up in the sky bit. It may be sunny, but the sun isn’t up. It doesn’t clear the West Seattle hill in the winter. We forgot that. So we’re in the shade. On a sunny day. Freezing our city slickerness right off.

The dogs don’t care. They’re on an adventure. They’re too low and too small to be real windbreaks. And, now I notice, they are standing behind me.

Survival of the fittest. They win.

“Hey,” I say to them. “Want cookies?”

Of course they do. Walk is over. Birthday cookies coming up.

Next year I’m celebrating my birthday in the summer. Every once in awhile we have one of those in Seattle.

I hope before, well, next winter.

Happy birthday me!

Solstice Sleeping: Dogs Softly Breathing of Home

December 23, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I awaken in the night and hear it. Silence. I wait for more. It comes. I smile.

I hear the dogs breathing softly in the night. Now, in the longest, darkest time of the year, I awaken in the still, silent night and hear only my dogs’ relaxed breathing. I smile. It’s comforting. Peaceful.

My dogs snore of home.

I can tell them by their breathing. Murphy, my delicate, mild-mannered oh-so-polite aging girl, snores like the proverbial lumber jack. Only, size for size, decibels louder. First time I heard it, she had just come home to live with me, and I leaped out of bed, sure we were being invaded. Over 13 years later, each time a snort startles me, I know the invasion was successful, and smile.

Sometimes, most times, she breathes with soft, gentle sighs. Other times I rest a hand lightly on her back, to make sure she’s still there. She’ll rouse and snuggle up, and we’ll go back to sleep in the cold dark night, back to back, butt to butt.

I used to wonder, way back when, if I could ever love this puppy who was not my beloved, long-lost English Cocker, if we could ever fit. We were strangers, but it didn’t take long for love to settle in my heart. Her snorts, her relaxed sleep, remind me.

Now, as I hear her soft breathing, I know that love, home, settled deep in hers. In theirs. Because all my animals sleep well, comforted in their safety. Knowing we are family. We are together. They do not have to be on guard. They can let down. They can breathe softly in the night.

Love created space to sleep.

Alki, my raucous ten-year-old boy, is rambunctious by day, soft murmuring dreamer by night. His breath whispers of deep dreams, contentment, secure and relaxed and deeply resting in his secured spot in bed. Storing up for daytime mischief.

I smile in the night.

Sure, I poke Murphy sometimes when her snoring shakes me out of mine. She’ll start to grumble but is asleep at the next twitch. Alki’s soft breathy lullaby ripples mildly.

I never hear Grace the Cat breathing. No snuffles from her cat perch above my desk, no soft snores from her Snuggly Safed bed at night. She’s there. Just can’t hear her. She’ll prowl the night, inspect us, snuggle.

Suspended in darkness, I am awake, happy, content. They are here, content with me. Species mingled, personalities meshed, family.

In the heart of a 21^st-century city the only sound in the deep night is a 21^st-century family, sleeping the human-animal bond.

Soft breathing, counterpoint. Pause. Rhythmic.

Life resting before dawn.

How did it come to this? How did so many years go by before contentment settled so easily on me?

But it did. We’re family. Here. Now. Content. Woman, cat, dogs.

Murphy snuggles closer. Alki is still, soft swoosh rising. Grace the Cat burrows deep.

I hear the dogs softly breathing.

Yes, they snore of home. Of love.

I smile.

All is well.

I am home. We are home.

We are family.

Animal Communication: On Being Frankly at Home with Animals

December 14, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Living with anyone, especially yourself, can be irritating. You have grand illusions about being saintly, or at least perfect, but reality doesn’t seem to work like that.

So you need a sense of humor, especially if you’re living with me. I’m lucky that my two Cavaliers, Murphy and Alki, and Grace the Cat know how to laugh.

I love my kids, my beautiful multi-species family. They are living reminders of what it takes to live the human-animal bond. They love me, or do a really good job of faking it. I appreciate that. Makes me feel good. Illusions and all that. (I mean, really, can all your foibles be loved all the time?)

Sometimes my kids irritate me. They’re not perfect and that can make me impatient. Or at least exasperated. When their bad habits annoy me, they simply annoy me, even though I stop to think that my bad habits annoy them.

Take my Cavalier boy, Alki. He’s slowed down a bit, but he still has a lot of energy—to chase and eat a stick, track gull poop right off the seawall, eat whatever he can as quickly as he can, roll in muck, bark at anything he feels like … and gulp water just before bedtime.

One night I stomped into the kitchen, yelling at him to quit drinking. He finally stopped.

I was annoyed, since this happens almost every night. They need water, but he can overdo it and barf it (I know, I know, don’t preach about this), and it’s just not thinking. (I know he can think, he proves it all day long. He’s also really good at just doing whatever he wants because he doesn’t think hard enough, one of his bad habits.)

So, I was yelling at him to stop. I grumbled, “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You do everything in excess.”

Alki paused to consider that as he walked away from the water bowl. “Well,” he said deliberately. “I don’t get enough to eat.”

I had to laugh. When you can talk with animals and other beings like I can, you’re privileged to hear exactly what they think, and follow the reasoning process. Alki heard me complain about his tendency to do things in excess, and he went right to the heart of the matter: his favorite thing is to eat, and he doesn’t get to eat in excess. Plus he was being cheerful and logical even while being scolded.

How many of us are like that with the humans in our lives? Or our animals?

I had to stop and marvel at the mind in this dog body. The magnificent dog who chose to be part of my family. Even with my faults. Who is more patient with me than I am with him, and is thus a living example of light and love.

Nope, my multi-species family isn’t perfect. Neither am I. The human-animal bond stretches to accommodate that, if we let it. If we listen, we can hear our family, whatever the species, remind us of that. It makes life worth it. And fun.

Thanksgiving: What We Should Really Be Grateful For

November 21, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I was thinking, what should I be grateful for this Thanksgiving? Then I saw this silly article, again, and I knew.

I’m grateful for common sense and for refusing fear.

This article, written by Joan Raymond and updated 1-25-11 at Pet Health on msnbc.com, suggests sleeping with our animals can give us diseases. Okay, it’s a good article. We have to take health seriously, including our multi-species family’s health. And we have to report on it responsibly, as Joan Raymond does. The article is not silly in the reporting but in the culture it reveals.

Reporters can’t comment on the facts or sense of their articles. That’s why they report: they give the facts and let us figure it out. We need straight objective reporting.

Those of us who comment on the straight objective reporting write about what it means to us. For me, it’s how can we re-connect people and the planet, from people to animals and the land and waters around us.

So, Raymond writes about the things that can get us if we sleep with or kiss our animals. Things like plague (from fleas), meningitis, round worms, and other horrific or just annoying things. Okay, first, really? Our animals should be healthy, just like us! They shouldn’t have these problems, so fix them already!

Here’s the problem with this reporting: it’s all filler material. No common sense. Just fear. You wade all the way through this article and find out that what they’re trying to scare us about never really happens.

People get hurt and killed in cars every day. You can sprain your ankle getting out of bed. You can choke on a cherry.

So do you avoid cars, getting up, or eating cherries?

No. You get smart. You say, no, I’m not going to be afraid of that. But I am going to be careful and pay attention.

So here’s what I’m paying attention to at Thanksgiving. Here’s what I’m grateful for:

I live in a country where we can disagree and still be safe, even though there are plenty of people who would like to change that.
A dear friend sent me a link to an inflammatory documentary on purebred dogs, thinking that my dogs being purebreds was the reason they had some health issues. She cared. It made me think about our assumptions, which I will address in future articles. Mainly: shelters and rescue organizations make a lot of money creating fear and prejudice, when they should be encouraging people to find their heart’s match in a dog or cat. Think, people, think! Talk to each other. Love. Be lucky that your friends care enough about you and your family to say something.
People who were users and not friends have left my life, providing openings for wonderful new adventures, wiser choices, and real friendships. Awesome!
Wonderful stores like East West Bookshop in Seattle and Vashon Intuitive Arts on Vashon Island have made me and my crystal partner, Fallon, welcome. We’ve met many wonderful people. And other venues are welcoming us.
My jade tree, Raymond, was dying, but community came together and saved him. A 200-pound houseplant given to me by my father is going into his fifth decade. Yes!
My great-grandparents had the vision to settle in North Dakota and pass a piece of it on to their descendants.
Finally, at long last, some smart medical practitioners have figured it out!
I’m grateful that my writing has touched lives, and that my book, Bridging Species: Thoughts and Tales About Our Lives with Dogs, was recognized with the prestigious Merial Human-Animal Bond Award.
My multi-species family is proof that the human-animal bond is alive and well and sleeping cozily together at night, 10 years now and counting!

This Thanksgiving we are grateful that we are all here, together, so we can write and talk about what makes sense, what doesn’t, and how we can create love from fear, starting with sleeping sensibly with our animals.

We celebrate Thanksgiving at our house: yes, that means the animals get to eat, too (and no, not stupidly).

We celebrate something everyday at our house, even if it’s just the joy of greeting each other in the morning and at night: in bed.

We celebrate birthdays. We celebrate the day each animal joined the family. We celebrate season changes, holidays, mistakes, triumphs, a good meal, a bad meal being over with, gas in the car, sun and rain, cozy flannel sheets on a winter’s night, friendship and family.

And we celebrate reporters who remind us that they’re sometimes stuck with silly assignments, and can still keep a straight face.

We celebrate Thanksgiving. We invite the whole world to celebrate with us.

(Not) Meowing for Mizuna: Exploring Greens with Dogs (and a Cat)

November 18, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Cooking is a skill I apparently lost with menopause—and only miss when I’m hungry.

I used to be a great cook. When I say this to friends they always pause, clearly deciding between laughing at what they presumed to be a joke or at what I’d cook, which wouldn’t be. It doesn’t stop me from offering to cook for them. I watch their eyes widen in surprise, and I’m thoroughly delighted when they say something like they just want to spend time with me.

And show up with Thai food. This is called ‘everybody scores.’

I do cook. Just ask my dogs, Murphy and Alki. They think I’m a great cook and take food cues from me: as a team we have wide-ranging tastes and low standards. If it comes out of the fridge if must be good, or else why would it be in there? The cookie jar is a given. We’ll eat our veggies, but never stop hoping for brownies. Or anything with peanut butter.

That’s how I know the dogs and I are related.

Grace the Cat, I’m not so sure about. She’s so smug about being right about everything that she takes convincing. Plus she’s fastidious and skeptical. As it turns out, these are all qualities that I need to rely on, since my cooking skills headed south with my boobs.

I learned this accidentally at the weekly Farmers’ Market in West Seattle. Almost every week I load up on great foods, all the vegetables and fruits you could want, and then some. Problem is, I’ve discovered things I didn’t know existed, and most often can’t figure out how to cook. The farmers are kind and patient, but it’s clear they think I’m an idiot and are just too polite to say so.

Take, for example, pea shoots. I love pea shoots. I have no idea what they are, except pea shoots, but we love them at our house, all of us, even the cat. We’re even doing a video starring pea shoots. Now, the dogs always come running when I come through the door with food, but if I say, “Pea shoots!” then Grace the Cat leaps up from her normal out cold snooze and races to hold down the kitchen counter while supervising grocery unloading.

You hold up a pea shoot and she perks up, meowing. No obstacle is too great as she promptly hunts it down: grocery bags, stuff on the counter, nothing stops her. If I offer pea shoots to the dogs (who are politely waiting on the floor only because they can’t reach the counter), Grace the Cat backflips onto the floor and bulldozes right through them. You’d think that for her, a pea shoot is, well, the fashionable cat’s mouse.

So you can imagine my surprise the day I decided to cook that week’s bounty of pea shoots.

I yanked them out of the fridge with a dramatic flourish and waved them at Grace the Cat. “Pea shoots for dinner,” I announced, grinning at her.

She stared right through them at me. Unrelenting disapproval. Stern outright disbelief.

“What’s your problem?” I asked. “You love pea shoots!”

She didn’t move. Just glared. I stuck them under her nose. She continued to glare at me as she strategically moved her head back.

I looked at the pea shoots. “Well, they do look different this week.” Yes, kind of like an entire species different, but I wasn’t going to say that.

Grace the Cat looked at me like I was an idiot. She is no fool. She knows when something is a pea shoot. And when it is not. Still they had to be eaten.

I tried the dogs next. They examined the suspect pea shoots with long, strained faces and then looked at me like I’d done something embarrassing and disappointing to their tummies.

“Lot you know,” I sniffed. “I admit they look a little weird.” I hesitated, but I’m thrifty and I’d bought them so I’d eat them.

Unless I could pawn them off on the cat. I waved them at her again. Nope.

I cooked those suckers for two dinners. Both were miserable: the suspect pea shoots were lank, bitter, limp, and tough, like spinach gone off the deep end. I sighed and ate it. Both nights the dogs and cat completely avoided me. I thought about how they just didn’t like pea shoots anymore, and about how right they were. They’d known something about that batch that I didn’t.

That weekend at the Farmers’ Market I stopped at my favorite greens vendor. Spring, you know, time for good things.

I stared down at duplicates of the pea shoots I’d suffered through. “What is that stuff?” I asked. “I thought it was pea shoots.”

“Mizuna,” she said, patiently. I think she flinches when she see me coming, but she’s always nice, and I always buy. Not sure what, apparently.

“Mi what ah?” I asked.

“Mizuna. It’s a green.”

“Well, I know that,” I said. It was green. Now, how to ‘fess up with the least embarrassment. “Should you cook it?” I asked innocently.

Shocked, she said in a strained voice, “Oh, don’t do that. Cooking makes it limp. And bitter.”

I giggled. For once the bad food wasn’t my cooking. It was mi what ah. I knew I shouldn’t have cooked it, but I’m not much of a predator, and I just didn’t know if it would fight back harder if I tried to eat it raw.

“I noticed that,” I said. “I sort of accidentally cooked it.”

She was shocked, like nobody could be that dumb. She was also disappointed in me. Like Grace the Cat in her stoic cat way.

“Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” the farmer said.

Good words to hear before I’d suffered through two miserable dinners.

Thing is, I wouldn’t have had to hear them if I’d just paid attention to my kids. The dogs, that goofy cat, they knew.

So now I’m a reformed shopper at the West Seattle Farmers’ Market. The vendors tend to explain things to me as they’re putting them in my bag: this is pea shoots, this is spinach, whatever. People in line shake their heads and sigh. But at least I get home safely. With food we kind of know how to eat.

Food that gets vetted by Grace the Cat.

Which is why I’m sticking to things the cat likes. Pea sprouts (certified by the farmer). Meat. Blueberry muffins. Cheese doodles. Salad. Corn bread, even though mine is more skanky than home on the range.

Because I guess I hit menopause and I’m not so home on the range. But there’s this cool grass I grow on the deck for the kids. They love it, so it must be good. Don’t have to cook it. Cool.

The Not So Crazy Things We Do for Our Animals

November 7, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

Here I’d been thinking I was just a bit off. And, as usual, not regretting it a bit.

When I think about being a bit off, I understand that I’m more off than normal. At least that’s what some people tell me, because I’m making a living in partnership with a crystal ball (literally). I did, however, think that I might just be the only person out there who bought a home, and a car, for my animal family.

Thanks to Yvonne DiVita over at BlogPaws I discovered a funky website called Daily Infographic. Where I discovered, in “20 Facts about Pet Ownership,” that I am in the minority but not all alone out there, doing whatever makes sense for my multi-species family.

See Item 7: “16% of dog owners and 14% of cat owners say they bought a home or a car with a pet in mind.” That includes me.

Even back when I didn’t have an animal family.

Back in 1998 I decided I wanted a dog again in my life, after grieving for my beloved English Cocker, Maggie, for 12 years. My landlord wouldn’t allow pets, so I bought a condo. A few months later an irrepressible, goofy Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Murphy Brown, came home to live with me.

Thirteen years later we’re both still here, aging together. We’ve been joined by another Cavalier, my goofy boy, Alki, and Grace the Cat.

The condo wasn’t the only thing I bought. By the time Grace the Cat came along 8 years ago it was clear we had car issues. The fancy Audi I’d bought to drive long distances to visit my nephews was impractical. I needed a family car: something easy to get into and out of with two dogs and a cat in tow.

The Audi went and a Toyota Matrix came. It’s a whole lot easier to get around in. Especially with the animals in tow.

And the condo? I love our condo. My multi-species family loves it. I planned for it to be a place where kids and dogs could come and go while enjoying the beach in our salty, sandy Seattle beach neighborhood. It worked really well for that. What I didn’t count on was the most obvious of all—my animals would age.

The human-animal bond is a strange and wonderful thing. Trying to live a thoughtful life is tough enough alone. Adding animals to the mix can be devastating. I wouldn’t trade it for a life without them, but I can’t sugarcoat it.

That’s where we’ve become our own strange statistic. Not surprising, really, considering the things we’ve shared, from past lives to a cherry addiction.

And a new, tough thing. Murphy and I share a gruesome arthritis: our futures our written in our spines.

It means we need a home where we don’t have stairs. I can do them okay for now, but it’s hard to carry things. Like groceries and handicapped dogs. As I watch Murphy gamely do the stairs, and Alki begin to hurt as well, I see time running out.

It means we’ll have to leave the home I bought for us to live in.

I love our home. My work means that I talk with all life. Our home, Frank, is a real living being, an active presence in our lives and our work. But we’ll have to leave him behind.

People say: “Really? You’d give up your home for a 13-year-old dog?”

To which I say, “Well, wouldn’t you?”

The Worst Part About Living with Animals

October 22, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I was out with the dogs, scooping poop as we meandered down the street.

The man carefully negotiated the turn on his motorbike and headed up the street toward us. He saw me bagging poop and, with a sympathetic grin, said, “That has to be the worst part of the job.”

“Not even close,” I laughed.

But he got me thinking.

What is the worst thing about living with animals, about living the human-animal bond, about living life as a multi-species families?

Having a migraine and dealing with upset dog tummies in the middle of the night—in a driving rainstorm?

Preparing food when you’re tired?

Baths and grooming?

The medical bills? Or the worry that caused them in the first place?

What it feels like to see the want and need for attention on their faces, and you’re too busy to give it?

Nope, none of those things.

The worst part of living with animals is aging.

Sure, the dying part won’t be a picnic. It will be sad, even if it’s a relief because it’s time (if it is), and I’ll cry a lot and want do-overs. I’ll cry because I’m sentimental and I love them and will miss them. I’ll cry when I think of all the times when I could have been a better friend, even though I know those times start when you’re about 2 and just multiply over the years. And zip by in light-years when you’re living the human-animal bond.

But really, aging is the worst part.

A lot of people give up when frailty strikes an animal companion. Old animals get abandoned. They’re too much work, or people can’t face their own mortality while helping a loved one with theirs. Or the bills are too big. Or they simply can’t accommodate their needs. Sometimes aging isn’t an option because death sneaks up on us.

Most of us stick with our aging animals because we won’t imagine anything else. Because they’re family, a special family: a multi-species one. Because it’s a choice, and not just ours: because our animals choose to grow old, just as we do, and we honor that choice. We watch aging as it happens, and every day our hearts break a little bit more, because we’re enjoying their old age with them, but the days keep slipping by.

I remember when Murphy was a puppy, a goofy high-spirited romper who dug holes bigger than she is and barked all the way down them to China. Now she’s 13, her head twitches a bit at night, the hind end is a bit stiff, the arthritis ripples down her back, and a good long nap, yummy treats, and a few short trips with sniffs are about her speed. Mine, too, really. Oh, yeah, she romps quite a bit, because truth is, she’s 13 going on, oh, about 10.

Now Alki is 10, gray-eared and missing a few teeth, a bit sore in the back at times. But show him a stick or a treat and he’s game for the adventure. Deaf. And sometimes creaky on the stairs.

And Grace the Cat? At 8 she appears to be ageless, but that’s just my way of not thinking about it. Hers, too.

So here’s the thing.

Aging animals are harder. Murphy isn’t up to the kind of exercise that Alki is, so we go out in shifts here. Murphy doesn’t like being left behind, but sometimes it’s necessary. We don’t like leaving her behind, but sometimes we have to.

Murphy had a lot of health problems early on. It astonishes me that people say this is because she’s purebred, as if being purebred is a dishonor instead of a choice. Truth is, while Murphy did inherit a few conditions, a bad vet made them chronic. That’s when I learned to fight back. That’s why Murphy got to be 13—and old.

Aging animals have aches and pains. We manage ours. I won’t tolerate pain, so old age here is as comfortable and easy as it can be.

But aging doesn’t stop.

Things slow down with an aging animal. I look back at the last 13 years with Murphy and I laugh and say to her, “Wow, we grew old together.” We did, but her old age will be shorter than mine. Someday, Murphy will be gone. And Alki. And Grace. But I’ll probably still be here.

Every day I look at my aging animals and I flinch. What will old age hold for us?

I know it’s a road I don’t want to walk. If I could, I’d stop time in its tracks, get the do-overs, spend more time snoozing in the grass with my kids, make everything perfect and painless.

Well, okay, maybe I would. Truth is, I’m not sure that anything would have been better than the life I’ve shared with my multi-species family. They’ve lived long happy lives. I’m tougher and smarter than I ever was without them. Kinder. More loving. Happier than I ever thought possible.

Because of my animal family I’ve found a life I never knew existed. I’m making a contribution to the world I never knew was possible. And I laugh a lot. So do my kids. We value our lives together.

Still, aging is the worst part of living with animals.

It’s also the best.

Aging animals are magnificent. As mine have aged with me I’ve seen the wonder of discovery, the zest for life, maturity and determination, curiosity and excitement and, yes, depression and grief. In my aging animal family I see everything we think we see in the best lives lived by humans.

I see grace. Belief. Possibility. Lives well lived.

Walking this last long road with my family I’m simply grateful that I can. It’s not time I ever thought I’d have, because, when problems cropped up with Murphy, it didn’t look like we had time, and Alki and Grace seemed, well, eternal.

I was naïve.

But I’m not stupid.

Aging is the worst and the best part of living with animals. It means we are lucky enough to experience a complete, full life with them. It’s a gift. An honor. A privilege.

It’s mine. I wouldn’t give it back for anything.

I cherish each and every day. It’s more than I ever expected. Harder than I ever wanted. The best thing that ever was.

Aging is a gift. One I accept with humility, compassion, gratitude, and some worry. One I hope to give back to the world as a lesson learned in love. In acceptance. In getting the last laugh, and making it a good one.

Here’s hoping you get that gift, too.

Living on the Planet of Awesome and Forever

October 6, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I live on the Planet of Awesome and Forever.

I have proof.

Sometimes my planet is real and physical: I revel in the sun and rain, the dark and stormy, the people and the beings who make me laugh and think while challenging me to be my best, no matter what.

Always my planet is a state of mind, clear in the choice of love over fear.

Love drives the Planet of Awesome and Forever. There are a lot of us here. It’s time for everyone else to join us. Here’s why.

I keep hearing how bad things are out there, how desperate people are, how survival means anything goes.

Well, anything does not go. Not on the Planet of Awesome and Forever. Here’s what that means for me.

In many ways 2011 has been a wonderful year for me: I won a prestigious national award for my book, I launched a new kind of intuitive consultation practice—a partnership with my crystal, Fallon—and I’ve met fascinating new people on their own amazing journeys. It’s been both humbling and exciting.

I’ve also faced stunning difficulties:

a virulent flu that derailed most of my year
a crisis that both complicates and enlightens my future
people who learned from me and then stole my work
people who expected me to work for free while they paid themselves (welcome to the new feudalism)
negligent and uneducated vets who endangered my dogs

So here’s what I did:

I took time to get well.
I looked for alternatives that make life easier for me and for my family.
I turned some matters over to an attorney.
I strengthened my resolve to model compassionate, thoughtful interactions.
I continued to quietly build a business that enriches my life as it serves an enlightened community.
I’m bringing the vets up on charges. Oh, you better believe that one!

And here’s what happened, just in the last few weeks.

I am finding answers that are healthy and make sense.
I discovered attorneys can be a good thing, and that controversy can both enlighten and strengthen.
I decided that if I’d had a choice 20 years ago, I’d still choose the pain and limitations of being disabled and having to reinvent a life over being an asshole and a thief and never finding my path.
If you open yourself up to love, fear just bounces the hell off:
- I’ve made wonderful new friends who think my intuitive practice with a partner who’s a crystal is intriguing, fun, and worthwhile.
- Neighbors came running to help my recovering dog.
- A close friend whose mother is dying raced to the vet ER and massaged a painful kink out of my shoulder.
- A dear friend who is undergoing her own family crisis cheerfully bathed my stinking dogs in exchange for a home-cooked meal.
- Two wonderful vets who love my dogs expertly cared for them.
- I finally met my eldest dog’s ‘grandma,’ and we’ll be celebrating life, love, and Cavaliers with her and her family next week, on what will be my multi-species family’s 13^th anniversary together.

Life is awesome!

Choosing Love Over Fear in a Practical World

Here’s what I know. Choosing love over fear doesn’t solve all our problems, because we won’t always agree. But choosing love does model our choices.

My experiences this year have sobered and intrigued me. What I and so many people see out there is troubling and encouraging. Troubling, because serious problems exist. Encouraging because many people are choosing healthy, compassionate ways to explore and resolve them.

We urgently need to define community, whether it’s our work or our social life. How do we want to live together, and how will we?

Make no mistake: living on the Planet of Awesome and Forever is not naïve. It is not turning a blind eye to the problems. It recognizes the increasing hostility in our society, the strange personal and business meltdowns that are justified in the name of survival. The disquiet is everywhere. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

Make note: it is not only humans who are concerned. Remember, I work as a professional intuitive, I talk with all manner of beings, and they, too, are advocating change.

It’s time for change.

The first change is a truth check:

Anything goes does not work.
None of us will survive if ‘survival’ defines our lives.

So here’s a plan:

Quit counting the desperation.
Start counting the awesome.

Here are my awesomes.

I have the world’s greatest family: a woman, two dogs, and a cat are proving that we’ll always be a family, in body or not, because on the Planet of Awesome and Forever love endures.

If we have to have bad days to get to the good ones, then we will. And we’ll make them count. Because there’s no other real, practical, inspiring choice than love. It’s awesome. And forever.

We live on the Planet of Awesome and Forever:

Where nothing is too hard or too much work or too painful
Where all beings are held responsible for their choices: firmly, compassionately, clearly
Because love and truth are always, always awesome and forever

It’s time to take back love, and community. It’s time to stand up for what’s right, to dig deep into conflict with patience and respect and compassion.

It’s time.

Come join us on the Planet of Awesome and Forever.

It’s your planet, too.

If You Die Before They Do: Protecting Your Animal Family

September 23, 2011 by Robyn Fritz

I had the flu in February. Big time. Haven’t been that sick in years. Bad cough. High fever. So sick I needed help.

I’m the only human in my multi-species family, so getting help was hard. Yes, I have friends to call, and no, I didn’t want to. The ‘flu’ (an epidemiologist told me they couldn’t identify this ‘flu,’ but I’m sure it was as close to a plague as we could ever fear to see). So many people were so sick with it that I worried about accidentally contaminating them by even having them deliver groceries or walk the dogs.

Taking care of myself was hard. Stunning, blinding, debilitating hard. I needed help. So did my animal family.

It’s taken me all year to get well. Two months to recover from the flu, four to recover from the side effects, still counting on rebuilding my energy.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about what would have happened to my animal family if I’d died.

That’s when I realized that I hadn’t updated my will in 9 years. My two dogs, Murphy and Alki, were provided for, but Grace the Cat would, technically, end up homeless. Although I’d had the guardianship conversation recently with any number of people, I hadn’t followed up for my own kids. I’d essentially ignored an essential element of the human-animal bond: I hadn’t made sure they would always be cared for.

So here’s what you do for your animal family: before you die.

Financial and Legal Provisions

Estimate your animal’s longevity.
Estimate your animal’s basic care costs: food, shelter, medical care, entertainment (yep, you’ll be dead, but they’ll still need to play).
Estimate your animal’s special care costs: food, medical care, emergency care, supportive care (palliative, mobility aids, etc.).
Update your will.
Prepare legal documents: have your attorney draw up legal documents providing for transfer of ownership (animals are our families, but legally they are property), care directions, and financial support.
Consider appointing multiple guardians:
- a legal guardian to oversee legal issues
- a welfare guardian to oversee the estate monies and monitor the animal’s welfare in a new home (financial and physical/emotional care)
- a physical guardian to adopt your animals

Physical Provisions

Find a physical guardian. Someone needs to adopt your animals. It’s better to have someone in mind (and willing) than for your animal family to end up in a shelter—or on the street.
- Consider each animal’s physical needs: does your cat need a warm bed at night, do the dogs sleep in bed with you or in the hall to keep cool, what do they like to eat, what are their favorite toys? What kind of family would suit them: a single person, an elderly couple, a rabble-rousing kid-filled family? Must multiple animals be rehomed together? Is your animal handicapped? I adore my handicapped dog, but some people may not be able to physically or emotionally care for an animal with special needs.
- Keep records: write everything up, including medical records. Keep it updated and share it with friends: everything you know about your animal should be right there. Make sure to discuss all of it with your potential guardians.
Find a welfare guardian to oversee your animal’s life in a new home. Appoint someone you know and trust who has common sense, a practical mind, compassion, and shares your mindset. That person will have tough choices. Make sure those choices are as close to your own as you would make. Your animals deserve it.
Consider separating guardianships. One person could supervise ownership transfer, ongoing physical and emotional welfare, and financial care for the animal’s life; another person becomes the caretaker (new owner). Seriously. Consider separating the money from the physical guardian. Welfare guardians can be objective and ensure that the monies are only going for your animal’s care. Yes, there’s the consideration that your animals are only being adopted for their estate, but there’s also the emotional burden physical guardians must deal with if a catastrophic medical issue arises. If you’ve planned properly, this guardian will fall in love with your family: lessen the burden by leaving the financial decisions to someone else.
Regularly update your legal documents to reflect the animal’s physical and emotional condition.
Regularly check in with your appointed guardians. We usually don’t plan to die, but we will, anyway. Say every year at tax time you also check in with prospective guardians, to make sure nothing has changed for them and they will still be available to serve their role.

Emotional Provisions

Define your animal’s basic emotional needs. Assess each animal’s personality, and verify that with friends who know them: our devotion to our animals can blind us to their faults, so make sure you outline what someone would like, and dislike, about each one. You’ll have a better chance of finding your animals a good home.
Physical needs help define emotional ones, but they really are separate issues. What do your animals need to be happy? Yes, they will miss you. Make sure their legal guardian knows what they need to feel safe, happy, comforted—and loved.
Find a good animal communicator. Yes, I talk with animals, but I also have trusted communicators talk with mine. Find someone who can help you talk with your animal companions about their concerns in this process and what they would like. They have rights, too. And opinions and feelings. Honor them.

So, have I updated care instructions for my kids? Um, well. Yes, guardians are notified, monies are set aside, preferences and needs are identified.

Here’s what I learned this year.

Being sick reminds us that we’re mortal, which reminds us that things end. I want to make sure that if I can’t be there, someone else will be: someone who will try, as hard as I do, to create a healthy happy multi-species family.

In the meantime, I’m going to remind myself every day that I’m alive, my kids are alive, and we have the world’s best family. I make sure to tell them that every day.

My kids know it, and believe it.

How about yours? Tell them you love them, every day. Before it’s too late. Enjoy your animal family. And don’t forget: if you’re not there, someone almost as good as you should be. Make sure of it.