All Creatures Great and Small: Pippen— Our Own Little Mafia Boss

By Jenn Carson

My husband and I have been together for almost 30 years. In that time, we’ve raised four boys and six dogs. Well… six and a half if you count the puppy we raised for my mom for the first five months.

Most of our dogs have been of the “big” variety—labs and lab mixes. Our first dog we had together, Meghan, was adopted from the Huron Valley Humane Society. I was told she was a shepherd/lab mix, but we always wondered because she wasn’t built like either of the two breeds. She had long, slender legs, petite feet, a glossy coat, and a fan tail that curled up. It wasn’t until recently, when my husband’s aunt and uncle brought an English Shepherd puppy home that we had an aha moment—Meghan had been an English Shepherd.

Neither one of us ever considered getting a little dog—they were yappy, biting little creatures (or so we thought). Big dogs were safer—they kept strangers away from our kids, foxes away from the chickens, and our feet warm in bed. So, what made us change our mind?

Read related article: Sit. Stay. Go Home.

As life moved on, our priorities shifted. Everyone in our family is now an adult. Constant supervision is no longer something our children need, which leaves my husband and I free to explore the country—to see all the things we didn’t get to because we started a family when we were young instead of sowing wanderlust. We bought a small motorhome in order to do this, but a 90-pound lab and a small motorhome don’t really go together all that well. We knew we’d never leave a dog behind for three or four months, and we knew we wouldn’t want to be without the companionship of a dog. So, the search began—for a small dog with a big dog attitude.

Boy, was this a lesson in framing your wants to the universe correctly!

We got a small dog with a very big attitude.

Pippen was a sweet-looking, less than three pounds, little bundle of brown and white fur. A cocker spaniel, poodle mix. We’d never paid more for a pup than we did for her, plunking down 800 hard earned dollars. The first weekend we had her she wiggled under the claw-foot tub in our Victorian house—and came out with a blue pill in her mouth. A struggle ensued—she didn’t like to give found treasures up. A few months previous my husband had dropped his blood pressure medicine—he thought he’d picked them all up—obviously he didn’t get them all. I scrambled to the phone and called the emergency vet, since it was a Sunday morning. The receptionist was very calm until I told her that Pippen only weighed three pounds.

Needless to say, a whole day at the vet on IV’s, and $600 later, we came home with a little ball of fur with two shaved front legs and a lesson learned—small dogs can get into places you’ve never even thought of. Looking at this positively, the floor under the tub has never been so clean.

Even though Pippen is the smallest dog in the house (only 11 pounds)—we still have a 90-pound male lab, and an old girl who weighs about 65 pounds—she is the dominant dog—most of the time. Our old girl will still put her in her place occasionally, but our male dog lets her boss him around something fierce. It’s comical most of the time, but sometimes momma has to step in, like when the other dogs want to wake me up in the morning. As soon as they approach the side of the bed Pippen starts to guard me. While I appreciate the fact that she wants to let me sleep, the fact that she’s standing on my head growling at the other dogs doesn’t really help all that much.

Pippen can also be very demanding.

I trained her to ring a bell when she has to go potty. I was so proud of how smart she was! She learned this little trick in about four days, and even trained the other dogs to know that when the bell rings, everyone can go outside. But now I wonder if I trained her or if she trained me? She now rings the bell when she wants to go out to potty, but she also rings it if she wants to distract the big dogs, if she wants to sit on the porch steps in the sun, or wants to go for a walk. If I don’t get up right away she walks into the room I’m in and cocks her head as if to say, “What are you doing hooman? I rang the bells! Are you deaf?” The look on her face is priceless and always makes me laugh (and groan at the same time because I’ve been interrupted for about the tenth time that afternoon).

Pippen can also be very insecure.

When I put my shoes on, she starts to lose her mind. She steals and runs away with the shoe I haven’t gotten on yet and she attacks my fingers when I’m trying to tie my laces. I’ve started kenneling her up when I have to leave without her before I put my shoes on or putting her harness on first if I am going to take her with me—that way she knows she’s going. Thankfully, she has also developed a bond with the boys who still live at home, so if I do have to leave her, I feel better about it—but she definitely prefers to be with mom.

Okay—so having a puppy has always been like having an infant—I knew that going into this, but I didn’t think I was getting a new mafia boss in the house. I’m hoping that she’ll calm down a little as she gets older—and for right now, I’ll just remember that it feels good to be so loved, even if she does try to boss me around. 

Learn more online at fourpawsvetwellness.com.

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Reiki with Dali Llama

by Laura Cowan

I’m guessing you’ve never had a ram approach you like a puppy, because even if you are lucky enough to know one, that isn’t the sort of thing rams do — unless they have a reiki therapist like Dona Duke as a friend. Dona is an Usui Reiki Ryoho Reiki master, and the resident animal reiki therapist at the Humane Society animal shelter. She accepted my invitation as a locally based holistic living editor to interview her and see animals receiving reiki in a farm environment. Dona wanted me to bring you the experience of something beyond cat shelter or hospital reiki that is so often written about these days. I’m so glad reiki is written about enough to require the variety, and she was so right. Reiki on a farm is a world unto itself. Let me tell you about this ram at Fluffy Bottom Farms. Call him Ishmael.

“No, really. Everyone on this farm has a fabulous name. The ram was just the beginning.”

Ishmael and his herd of sheep and cows at the Fluffy Bottom Farms farm and creamery in Chelsea, receive reiki from Dona on a weekly basis. I wish I had the data to prove to you that reiki improves the cheese they make, but suffice it to say it’s phenomenally delicious stuff, now sold at grocery stores and retailers all over Michigan. I tried the aged raw manchego, which went perfectly in a cherry spinach salad. Owners Kelli Conlin and Angie Martell were out of the house the day I visited. Dona brought treats for the turkeys and hens on the day she introduced me to the animals. The three tom turkeys were not so welcoming, but it was mating season and they were strutting their stuff, so I won’t hold it against them that they followed me around with fanned feathers and a serious attitude.

I was nervous. Why was I nervous? I have turkeys in my rural wooded yard daily so it wasn’t about being stalked by birds half my size. I used to belong to a dairy farm share myself, so I’m comfortable around herds of cows and sheep, and free-range birds. I am also trained as an animal reiki master. Was I nervous because I know I shouldn’t walk up to farm animals and assume they’re friendly when I enter their pen? Maybe, but this growing awareness of my own nerves led to a profound reiki-led epiphany in short order. Ishmael was climbing the gate of his pen to nuzzle Ms. Duke, and the other ram, Gabriel, accepted me into his pen to rub up against me for reiki and a pet. I was experiencing the effects of animal reiki before I even realized it. I’m used to giving reiki, you see, but I’m not used to receiving it from animals.

We entered the sheep pen in the barn, where a tall brown llama named Dali watched me attentively. He was gentle and protective, that much was obvious, but I didn’t expect what came next. Dali noticed I was nervous, Dona said, and as the protector of the herd against local coyotes, he was investigating why. Ah, that was the reason for the nerves. I had been considering a number of ways of applying reiki in my own life and career with animals, and I had expected to be more at ease. It hardly does to have an animal reiki master acting jittery around a flock of sheep. But by now, I should have known something else was afoot. This was animal reiki in action. It wasn’t magic. It was reciprocity.

Suddenly, it was just me and Dali, experiencing that connection of minds that comes from the unity consciousness of universal life energy flow. The llama was teaching me, not only to experience sacred space on the receiving end from an animal, but he was giving me a nudge. Suddenly I knew. I wasn’t meant to focus on animal reiki. With one glance, I understood. I should have figured, given what I know about reiki, that it would be the animals to give me that course correct on how to apply healing energies in my life and career. I wish I could tell you how this felt, but maybe if you have experienced reiki, you already know. Even getting a nudge of “no, not quite this path” is a profoundly healing experience. It was just that in this case, it was the llama receiving reiki that helped me as much as I helped him, if not more.

“You must approach them as equals,” Dona said. So true. Because they are. That’s where the reciprocity comes from, however you experience it. “It’s easy for me to work with animals, because I approach them as friends,” Dona tells me. Indeed. These animals dearly loved this woman, crowding her for treats — the largest behaving the most gently of all. The new lambs watched her with cocked faces from behind their mothers. The llama was at complete peace around her. The sheep readily decided to try to eat the buttons off my coat rather than ask too many questions about whether I belonged, since I came with recommendations from Dona. She was at home. This was her herd.

Dona used to have horses and rode dressage. “What you learn training horses is that if anything goes wrong, it’s not the horse’s fault,” she tells me, adding:

What is key in training horses is being present, being consistent, and in an emotionally good place, because you are literally sitting on a large animal’s nervous system. It’s the same thing with reiki. You need to communicate with their whole system. You have to learn to be quiet and be still, and work together.

This is true of human reiki, as well, and is particularly true of animals who live outdoors, as they are highly tuned in to their environment.

Dali the llama blinked with his long soft lashes. I felt the healing space around us. We were connected with everyone and everything, but we were also just the two of us. How odd. Sometimes a feeling of discomfort and nerves as you receive reiki is the message. There was nothing wrong with me. Healing in general often comes to us like this — wrapped up in the messages of anxiety and health problems and feelings that warn us of the importance of a change. There is nothing wrong with the message, and there is nothing wrong with our ability to receive the message. When we learn to listen and flow with the energy, the healing and growth naturally comes. Because that’s what reiki is. It’s just life, and life is growth, and healing, and creativity. Reiki is delightful, but sometimes upending. It is the never-ceasing river of powerful change that will help you align with your highest good if you simply allow it and flow with the process. Reiki had not too long ago swept me out of one life and into another set of new possibilities, and here I was. Llama-facilitated therapy. So much for humans being on top of the chain of consciousness! It simply isn’t so. The animals can teach you this, particularly through animal reiki.

We walked outside to the field, where Dona told me the herd often comes running to meet her. Sure enough, the remainder of the herd came at a full trot all the way from the next pasture. I have never seen more animals happy to see one person. Granted, she brings carrots, but even so. She allowed the animals to approach her for reiki. They stood next to her, quietly alert, until they were finished — usually about five to ten minutes per animal that approached her. They often seemed to wait their turn.

Ishmael ran to the back of his pen at the barn and climbed it like a goat.

“Get down,” Dona told him. “That isn’t safe for you.”

He pushed his hip up against the fence. “They show you where they want reiki,” Dona told me.

Sure enough, this was exactly what the other ram Gabriel had done with me. He had allowed me into his pen, sniffed my hand, and then pressed his side up to me and turned around. Like I said, not rammish at all. Reiki-ish. Not that there is anything wrong with a ram acting like a ram on an ordinary Tuesday, but these animals were co-creators in their healing. Phenomenal stuff. The air was thick with healing, like walking on air. I noticed this with my cat as well when I started practicing reiki on family members. She started sitting on my hands while I was working. Animals love reiki, because animals are very aligned with their natural selves and the balanced energies around them.

Inside the farmhouse, the dogs were waiting for treats and to be let out in the yard. A feral cat scrambled under the porch, while a black domestic pawed to be let in for food. A tiny lamb named Athena, who was born with a leg injury and rejected by her mother, was waiting for us in a pen wearing a diaper. She was only an armful of animal. Dona picked her up and bottle-fed her. Of all things I expected that day, it wasn’t to change a lamb’s diaper and have her cry after one of her surrogate moms. She rooted and arched her neck for Dona just like a human newborn

for its mother. She didn’t want me, and you have to understand animals often do. But there was nothing wrong. This was the message. This was the healing.

Dona told me more of the story of how she got into reiki, and just like my story, it was full of synchronicities and healing experiences, and meetings with amazing animals. I was deeply grateful she had opened up her life to me at all, as she is clearly at home with animals even more so than with humans. She was gracious and empathic while I trailed her around the farm, and like many reiki masters I know, she was also highly intuitive and could see straight through to people’s energy and feelings, just like she does with animals. She quickly spotted my connection with Dali, and how the other animals pushed me away almost in unison. This is more than impressive: it is an important skill for both animal and human reiki masters to be able to spot areas of tension and potential problems and possibilities when dealing with clients or rooms full of animals or people, even though the reiki will always go wherever it is needed anyway. Maybe that is what I love about reiki above all other healing properties. It isn’t just a healing energy flow. It is sacred space and witnessing the miracle of life. People who practice reiki, at least in my experience, are profoundly tuned in to universal healing energy flow and the feelings of those around them.

We went to say goodbye to the herd before we left. Dali approached me. I reached for his face.

“No,” Dona said. “He doesn’t need you to pet him. He is telling you you’re okay. He’s checked you out. You’re part of the herd.”

Already? And I was still trying to make friends. I put my hand down. Dali brought his soft wooly face right up next to mine and stood, touching cheek to cheek, for a good minute.

I closed my eyes. So did Dali. We stayed cheek to cheek, touching our chins.

“Isn’t that amazing?” Dona said. “They help us as much as we help them.”

Yes, they do, very much. Thank you, Dona and Ishmael. Thank you, Dali. Namaste. Thank you, reiki. And the path flows on.

Laura K. Cowan is the Kids in the Community Columnist and an editor for The Crazy Wisdom Journal. She is a green tech editor and magical realist author from Ann Arbor (Winding Road Magazine, Inhabitat). Ms. Cowan once ran her own green parenting blog 29Diapers, which gave her the dubious distinction of being the only mommy blogger in existence who could explain variable valve timing. You can reach her at cwkidscolumn@crazywisdom.net. 

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