Do Your Animals "Speak" to You in Your Dreams?

Years ago I began recording my dreams in a journal, and spent years with a Jungian therapist learning how to interpret them. It was fascinating, and for me, a spiritual journey to learn how to pay attention to messages coming from my soul in dream symbols, reflecting life lessons I may have otherwise missed. After all, most of us are taught to think of our dreams as "just dreams" with nothing to offer or teach us about ourselves.

It wasn't until I had dreams about my dog, Maggie, that actually manifested in waking life that it began to dawn on me that some of my dreams were predictive, or clairvoyant, if you will. This is not something unique to me -- I think we all have these type of dreams, but don't pay enough attention to know it. Perhaps especially when it comes to our special animals. I began to wonder if the special bond between animals and their humans allowed for this type of animal communication to take place in our dreams. Dreams are Messages from the Soul is a chapter in my book, MAGGIE the dog who changed my life, devoted to my predictive dreams about Maggie; dreams that were trying to warn me about her health.

My cat, Cinnamon and I have always had a special communication with each other. As she was declining last month, I asked her to please let me know in a dream when she was ready to go, ready for me to me to make that decision we all dread -- to say our final good-bye.

It was Wednesday night, August 25. I slept on the living room floor, hoping Cinnamon would sleep near me. I awakened once, warmed to find her lying just a couple feet from my head. I reached out to touch her. I fell back to sleep and then the dream came:

Cinnamon and I went to speak to a young dark-haired man. He was an animal communicator. As I stood there silent, he looked at me and said, "Isn't there something you want to ask me?"
"Oh, yes," I said, as though I'd forgotten why we'd come. "Is it time to euthanize Cinnamon?"
"Yes!!" he said emphatically, while nodding his head just as forcefully. In fact, it seemed his entire body was nodding.

It was a message I could in no way miss. It was totally congruent. I awakened in tears, knowing the truth -- that this was our last night together. Cinnamon was still lying in the same spot. I got up and went to her, crying.

"I get it, Baby Soul," I told her. "I get it." She was purring. My heart was breaking, but I knew what we had to do.

I called the mobile vet the next morning and we honored Cinnamon's desire that afternoon. In all my pain in losing her, there was a comfort in having had such a clear communication from her.

A similar unmistakable dream about Cinnamon came to me years before. Cinnamon had developed hyperthyroidism, and it was a few days before she was to have surgery to remove her "enlarged" thyroid gland. The dream character was menacing as she told me in no uncertain terms that Cinnamon would die if she had this surgery. I canceled her surgery the next morning. After informing myself further about radioactive iodine treatment for hyperthyroidism in cats, I elected to go this route. After they scanned Cinnamon's thyroid gland, they told me it was a good thing I didn't have surgery done because the difference in size was nearly impossible to see with the naked eye, making it difficult to know which lobe of the gland to remove. Although I wasn't wild about exposing Cinnamon to radioactive iodine, it seemed the least invasive therapy over time. The idea of forcing medication down her every day to suppress the thyroid was not a direction I wanted to go with her. The drug route was not without its' side effects. Cinnamon did great with the iodine therapy. She never developed hypothyroidism (the iodine therapy did not destroy the "good" remaining lobe of her thyroid gland), nor did her hyperthyroidism return.

The importance of dreams are one of the ways Maggie changed my life, and why I wrote MAGGIE the dog who changed my life. I can't encourage you enough to connect with your dreams as a part of you. They can have vital messages that many of us miss because we don't give them enough credibility. Our animals, in particular, may communicate with us in our dreams.


Posted by:

Dawn Kairns  

Author of MAGGIE the dog who changed my life

Website: www.dawnkairns.com 
Blog: Dawn Kairns and Maggie the Dog  

Twitter: themaggiebook

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Telepathy In Our canines

I think there are those signs we exhibit, like putting on our shoes or turning off the computer, that are signals to our dogs that they clearly recognize as coming before we engage in a fun activity with them. But what about those times when our only signals are our thoughts?

J. Allen Boone shares experiences in his book, Kinship With All Life, where Strongheart, the famous Hollywood dog from years ago, was in another room and came running in when Mr. Boone began merely thinking of taking him into the hills for a romp. I share an experience in Maggie: the dog who changed my life about Maggie's sulking reaction after she buried her nose in my work clothes and realized, "no fun for us together today;" and her very excited response when I had my casual home clothes on, which usually meant a hike or a trip to the lake. But an interesting thing happened when I had on my work clothes (she had her typical sulking reaction) and I was in front of the bathroom mirror applying my make up, thinking, "Hmm. I have a short workday. Maybe I can take Maggie with me and she can wait in the car while I see my patients, and we can go for a hike..." Suddenly she's up, staring at me, her tail beginning it's wag. How does she know what's going on in the privacy of my mind? I'm not looking her direction as I roll mascara onto my eyelashes.

In the field of psychoneuroimmunology, they say that our thoughts create chemicals in our brains. Dogs have such a profound sense of smell. Do our canine buddies smell our thoughts, much like a seizure alert dog might smell the chemical changes of an impending seizure?

But then there's the case of Jill Meza and her dog, Cinnamon, reported in the Santa Maria Times. Cinnamon alerted Jill prior to her heart arrhythmia and a hypoglycemia attack with different signals for each. When Jill was on a trip to Cuba, and Cinnamon was staying with a friend in the United States, Jill dreamed Cinnamon was pushing on her leg, her signal for low blood sugar. Jill got up, checked her blood sugar, and it was very low. She later learned that Cinnamon became very agitated the same night, at the very time Jill was having her attack. So how does smell account for that one? I am pretty prone to believe in spiritual and energetic connections in life, including with our beloved animals. Perhaps particularly with our animals where our deep bond may allow for telepathy and intuition to operate so naturally.

What about the other way around? Do you have those times when your dog stares a hole right through you? They may be simply trying to tell us, "I have to go outside," or I want a treat," or "I'm bored, let's go play." Are there also those times our dogs try to get a more profound message to us, like the woman whose dog kept nudging her in the breast who later discovered she had breast cancer? Do we listen and try to tune into them the way they do us? Perhaps you do if you are an animal communicator or have your own intuition very attuned. But many of us have a long way to go to read our dog's communication to us. Many of us just don't always know how to get it. Tuning in to how our animals communicate with us, and receiving their messages, can be a real gift to them.

My belief is we all had telepathic abilities preverbally, but we humans tended to lose them with the advent of language. Our animals haven't. Humans that haven't lost the ability we call psychics or animal communicators. They may be the ones to help us recover some of our own intuitive abilities to help us better understand our animal's needs. Recording your dreams may be another way to begin to tune in to intuition and telepathic communication. I was astounded to discover some of the ways I received messages from or about Maggie through my own telepathic dreams.

Posted by
Dawn Kairns
Author of MAGGIE: the dog who changed my life
www.dawnkairns.com