Did You Know that an Animal Can Be Your Nurse

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays; the food, the cooking, the parade, the ceremony of it all. And I must say, ours is very peaceful and small, but I cook as if there are ten people here when it's really just two of us and our four fur babies, three dogs and one kitty. I love to cook so the cooking and planning is my favorite. I enjoy that as much as I do eating it all. So I'm not so sure what happened a couple of days later, but I got the 24 hour bug as they call it, fully exhausted, feeling sick, and food coming out of both ends if you know what I mean. I was down for the fucking count. The referee said 10! and I was still out.

I had a very important errand to run earlier in the day and could not wait to get home and crawl into the bed. I did something I never do and that is crawl into the bed with all my clothing on and fell asleep for hours. I awakened a couple of times that afternoon just to help my bestie with feeding the animals, usually my job, but I just wasn't able to do it by myself. I could hardly stand.

After feeding the fur babies, I went back to bed with orders from my bestie to stay there. Later that night I could feel the Littles, as we call our two smaller dogs, get into bed with me and they both love to snuggle so the snuggling began and as I felt their bodies close to mine, I could actually feel them draining the illness out of me. I know it sounds psychedelic, and maybe it is, nothing wrong with psychedelic. I truly felt myself during my deep sleep begin to feel better and better. And there are people who truly subscribe to animal healing. But it was my first time truly feeling it work so beautifully for me.

As the night went on, I could feel myself experiencing a bit of euphoria even, it was amazing. I knew that when morning came I would feel like myself, well, and fairly energetic, ready to start my day. I slept for more hours than I had ever slept with them by my side. Late in the night, our elder fur baby Chloe started barking by my bed as she does sometimes if she falls asleep on the couch. I lifted the covers in my sleep and Chloe jumped in. That was all she wrote. It was complete. She then snuggled against my other side and kept moving closer and closer to me and as she did that I wrapped myself around her and went back into a very deep sleep.

I truly believe between the deep sleep and the animal love medicine that it helped me rid myself of this yucky bug and brought me back into myself, healthy and sound. For those who have pets, many may already know of this feeling, this phenomena of animal medicine, being healed and made well by the love of animals. Animals are extremely intuitive and they know when you are not yourself, and so they come to the rescue naturally without even thinking of it in that way. They just do what they do, if you allow them, with your heart and your open mind.

This is one of the reasons why many men and women coming back from war either get pets by adoption or purchasing or are given pets to help with their PTSD symptoms, because animals really do know when your behavior is changing and they can detect when you are sick, afraid, or disturbed by something. They are able to ease that pain, whether mental or physical or both. I mean pain is rarely just one or the other. It is usually both.

If you have never had a pet or just maybe had a pet that you never really developed a relationship with, you are really missing out on the power of love. They don't get tired of nursing you and loving you, and being what you need without asking for anything in return. For love, food, and water, they give us so much more than we'll ever know. And for those of us who have lost pets because of their passing, we feel the void they can leave behind but we also feel the love they leave behind and that is real, if nothing else in this world is.