Pets that came back

One of the most wonderful thing in our lives are our animal friends. The amount of love we get from them is huge and it is so unconditional it breaks all barriers.

I often wondered what happens to animals after they leave their earthly form. I got my own experience regarding this. Also my friend Hanne told a story of their beloved dog. I shall write them both here. To me they are both miracles of love - I am sure the love we feel for our animal friends, the same love they give back to us, keeps us connected even after their death.

Hanne is a friend of mine whose horse I have painted a portrait of. Before I met her and her husband for the first time, I got a dream where a blue collie was running around a young couple and I got the feeling the dog´s other eye was damaged. When I saw them later I realized they were a lot like the couple of my dream. I mentioned the dream to them a bit hesitantly as some people don´t want to talk of such "supernatural" things. To my surprise Hanne told me that the dog must have been their Bella, who was a blue collie. Bella had run under a train and died tragically. Most of the injury that killed her was on the other side of her head, around the eye.

Now Hanne told me that some months after Bella´s tragic accident she woke up at night and sleepily recognized Bella sleeping in their bed. She tried to push the dog away and then suddenly realized that there could not be a dog in their bed anymore.
Also Hanne told she had heard their beloved cat miaow a few times - after he had died of old age.

And then to my story:
We have always had cats. At the time we had three; two abessinians and one "ordinary" cat (if ever there is such a thing). One of the abessinians, Casanova, had to be put to sleep because his kidneys had stopped functioning. Our vet said he could live some months under medication but we did not want to put our old friend through months of agony while his condition would have slowly deteriorated from bad to worse. So we asked the vet to put him to sleep and held him in our arms, hands over his heart until it stopped beating, thanking him for the friendship and love he had shared with us for 16 years, tears streaming down our cheeks.

The next morning I was just coming out of sleep in bed when I felt a cat walk over my legs. I heard my husband feeding the cats in the kitchen and it took a while before I realized what was odd in it all. The two remaining cats were miaowing in the kitchen. If they were there, who was walking over my legs? I could feel the weight of the cat and the individual steps that moved the blanket. I could not help the smile that spread to my face. Casanova always had the habit of waking me up by walking over my legs. I just knew he had come back to tell us he was all right and still loving us.

Leena

Right place, rigt time

Sometimes it is us who act as miracle-bringers to other people.

I remember one time when I was a small girl. We lived in the suburbs, in a block of flats, on the sixth floor with a good view to the surrounding area. In the afternoons I usually sat with my nose pressed to the window, waiting for my Mom to come home from work. She usually came at the same time every day, and I could see her walking from the bus stop along the walkway that could be seen through the trees. That one day I got worried. Mom was late and I was getting afraid something had happened to her.

Then, almost an hour late, she finally appeared from behind the building next to us. I rushed to the door to give her a hug when she came in. She put down her grocery bags, took off her winter clothes and sat down to tell us what had happened.

She said she had got off the bus and started walking towards home. She passed a young man, and after a few steps she got the odd feeling something was not right. She stopped and looked back. The young man was just standing there with his toes on the road. She thought she´d just better go, but the feeling was so strong that something was wrong, that she decided to turn back.

Her insticts were right. She asked him if everything was all right and at first he paid her no attention. But when she insisted and kept on talking to him, he finally admitted he was waiting for the next bus so he could jump under it. His life was in a situation where he saw no hope anymore and he had decided to commit suicide.

My mother stayed there with him for almost an hour, talking to him, pointing to him there is always hope, her heart in her throat every time a vehicle approached them. And finally she got through to him and he stepped back and thanked her.

How many people would just have walked past this young man? We never knew what became of him, and I hope he is still alive today, remebering the day when an angel in human form cared enough to stop and ask if he was ok and showed him that little path towards hope. We have all been there - when we cannot see the path anymore and feel like there is a brick wall in front of us. What a blessing are those who then touch us and lead us around that wall and show the road is still there. People like that show there really is caring and love in the world, they make those words alive.

My mother is the person who told me repeatedly when I was a child: "Even the darkest cloud always has a silver lining". She was and is so right, and that day I was so proud of her my little heart felt like bursting in my chest.

"Without loving acts, loving words are meaningless. "
- unknown

Leena

Feather out of thin air

Some years back I was far away from home and was homesick. I had just received news that a family member had been diagnosed with cancer. I was alone with my fears and there was no one to tell me it would be all right. I was writing my diary, feeling depressed. I sat inside in a room with windows and the door closed. I sighed, looked out of the window and in my mind hoped for a sign that things would go well, that it would not yet be time for a funeral but that instead there would be healing.

After a while I decided it was time to finish my writing and looked down on the open diary. I could not believe my eyes. There was a perfect, small fluffy white feather right there on the open page. There is no way to explain where it came from. No one else was in the room, it could not have come in from a window or through the door.

To me white feathers have always been a good sign and so was this one too. My family member healed completely from cancer and is well even today.

Some say angels have no wings but I tend to believe they just might... White and soft and beautiful, just like the little feather.

Leena

Stallion´s Sensitivity to Reiki Treatment

I got this story from my friend Vickie Beckman in Sweden. Vickie gives reiki treatment to both horses and humans. (She has also treated a family member of mine who is having cancer and I am really grateful to her for it)
You can reach Vickie (both in English and in Swedish) at:
vickiebeckman@hotmail.com

Leena

"Isaich is a 2-year-old Morgan stallion. He accidentally ate a half rotten apple that had fallen on the ground - with a wasp on it. I realized this later when I saw a pile of wild apples in the pasture the horses use and there were dozens of wasps on them. When he swallowed, he obviously got stung in the throat. It swelled so that he could not eat or drink for two days.

I did not realize this until he covered Tindra, a palomino mare with white mane. She got blood on her mane. I thought stallion´s milk tooth was falling even though it was a bit too early for that and also there was slime coming out of his mouth.

In the evening we took a couple of horses in and I felt Isaich should come in also, so I could check him thoroughly. There was still some slime coming from his mouth so I put him in his stall and gave him a bucket of food. How stupid can you get?

Immediately he got a blockage in his gullet, the food could not get through. A horse can not throw up so he started to cramp strongly and sweated enormously. Sweat was spraying in small showers from his flanks with every cramp and slime was running like a river from his mouth. I forced him outside and managed to make him walk while I massaged his gullet strongly from the left to remove the blockage. It did not help and I could not get a hold of a vet either. So we took him to the wash stall and forced a water hose in his mouth and turned the water on with full power.

The water pressure was so strong I managed to force the blockage away without damaging his windpipe, thank God. Then he was put to his own stall and I sat outside and gave him reiki.

He stood then, and munched a little hay, but the minute I started he placed his head on the stall door and looked at me. Then he closed his eyes and nickered and stood totally still for 35 minutes. When I was finished I quietly gave thanks three times and did not move. That´s when he lifted his head, looked at me again, neighed in a low voice and went on to eat the hay.

What an amazing feedback I got about my reiki. While I was doing it, the stable cat Märta came and san in my lap the whole time, and my cocker spaniel Gibson sat on my left side, pressed against me and tried to put his head in my hands - something he does always when I do reiki treatments.

This happened at night and in the morning we were to fly to Venice. I got no sleep at all that night so I slept in the plane.

Isaich is now totally ok and even more gentle than before the treatment. But he is a pure Morgan horse and they have such amazing personalities, more like a dog´s really than a horse´s.

I am so happy all went so well."

Die another day.

This is from a blog by my friend: http://gobody.blogspot.com/

I don’t know if you believe in synchrony, alternative fates and the mystery that shrouded life or not. In any case this story should be interesting.

I traveled the past few days to another country to attend my best friend’s doctoral dissertation and the festivities that follow it. For a long time, I have been thinking about what could be the perfect present for such an important occasion in his professional life. I wanted it to be something that is symbolically important to him. We have talked over the many years we knew each other about how dreams always come true when you really want them (my opinion), and I wanted to prove my point by giving him something that attest to that. One of his life long dreams was to have an Aston Martin, and he was wishing it all the time just to prove to me that not all dreams come true. So I decided to give him an Aston Martin, or to be precise, a model of it :).

That time in my friend’s life is not only important in his career but also at the emotional level. In the party that evening he was trying to get his ex-girlfriend (with whom he is still in love) back to him. Although I could see that these two cannot dance to the same tune, he was hopeful. The girl, however, didn’t have any illusions about where she stood and she was brutally dismissive of my friend’s feelings. The message was hammered home in the most unpleasant way and I could see how hurt he was. Luckily the atmosphere of the evening and the importance of the occasion managed to distract him and pull him out of his misery.

The next morning in a super state, we were catching up with what is happening in our lives when he confessed to me that he had in the last few weeks unexplainable feeling that he is about to die. My explanation to him (the way I intuited it), was that the association with that girl would have meant death to him in some way or another, even if it’s just a symbolic death. I gave him his present then joking that next time he wishes for something he has to be precise about what he wishes for or he might end up with something that represent the wish but not the original. Our jaws dropped with surprise when, as we unwrapped the present, we both noticed at the same time the words written in bold red on top of the model “Die another day”. It was the model of the car used in James Bond’s movie with the same title.

My friend’s name is James. And I do feel that there is still more to this story.

Crash that didn´t happen

This happened many years back, when I had just got my driving licence. I had driven to my dance lesson and during that time the first snow had started to fall. And oh boy was there a lot of it! I could not believe my eyes, when I walked into the parking lot. Our car had summer tyres and I was horrified at the thought of driving in that blizzard. Still - if I wanted to get home I had to drive the car. We live in an area outside the city where buses went very rarely that time of the day.

So I got behind the wheel and started my way home. Everything went well because the city had sent all the snow plough -vehicles out. I began to relax a little. Until three kilometers from home when I reached the limit of the ploughing area. From then on the road was thickly covered with snow. It was very windy and because of that the very center of the road was almost free of snow. So I drove very carefully there. And then another car turned from behind a curve and I had to go back to my own lane.

I was a very inexperienced driver then and did not know how easily thick snow just grabs the car. But I sure found out it soon enough. Suddenly the car started veering towards a deep ditch on the right, filled with water. Instead of applying the breaks I accidentally first started driving faster and turned the steering wheel too much in the opposite direction. The car spinned sideways and headed directly towards the ditch on the other side - only there were also big trees there.

Time slowed down. It was quite amazing. I calmly noted that the other car was only a few seconds away from impact, driving directly to my car´s right hand side. I noticed the other car was braking from the way its headlights were moving. My car was going straight towards the trees and the ditch. Almost without any emotion I just thought that "Oh, is this it then?". I knew there was no way to avoid the crash, it really was a question of seconds.

The next moment I sat maybe 50 meters from the place the crash was to happen, in my car, driving normally towards home. I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw the backlights of the other car, it driving normally also.

I have no idea what could have happened. There is no way I could have steered the car away from that situation without the crash happening. But it never happened. In a blink of an eye everything changed and I was safe. I only remember how absolutely calm and relaxed I was, how time slowed down, myself observing me driving the car and calmly taking mental notes about the situation. There was no fear. Not while it was about to happen, and not later either.

I guess I started believing in guardian angels then.

Leena

The idea for this blog came to me when I once sat thinking what kind of things I like to read. Well, novels, of course - but if it happens I feel a bit low, I love to read about miracles in normal people´s life. Strokes of luck, situations when all goes perfectly agains all odds, synchronistic events - and spiritual miracles too. Things that tell there is more to life than meets the eye. Stories of joy, love and hope. Perhaps others like such stories too. So if there is a miracle you´d like to share with others, let me know. I shall not reveal your name if you so wish.

Leena

"Anyone who doesn´t believe in miracles is not a realist"
- David Ben-Gurion